


bloom in the bitter snow

by Makari Crow (Beanna)



Series: Thy word is a lamp [3]
Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Artoria Pendragon | Saber - Freeform, Emiya | Archer - Freeform, M/M, Tristan | Archer - Freeform, continuing to feature Merlin's denial of anything that might be categorized as an emotion, other characters featured in the background:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beanna/pseuds/Makari%20Crow
Summary: Runs more or less concurrent with Measure of Surrender. The Chaldea side of the Singularity-that-isn't.Merlin has a project to supervise through to its completion, even if honestly he'd rather be anywhere else. Anywhere at all. People won't stop acting as if they're friends with him, and he can't get anyone to believe that this is just a whim of boredom and oversaturation with the narrative trope of heroic self-sacrifice.This continues to be fine. Probably.





	1. black hole sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purplejabberwock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplejabberwock/gifts).

> Best read after [Measure of Surrender](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656994/chapters/49055984). Primary warning for various descriptions of injuries; watch this space for a couple of additional content warnings.

**ldavinci****:** We have a hit. It's him. 96% Spirit Origin match.  
**ldavinci:** Jerusalem, 9th century BC.  
**ldavinci:** And it's not April yet, by the way.  
**ldavinci:** But I will graciously accept the early birthday present.  
  


By the time Merlin claws himself out of strange and probably horrifically symbolic dreams, the messages have been sitting there for a while. Immediately when he processes what he has read, Merlin puts down all thoughts of sheepy peculiarity and attempts to get Da Vinci's attention in turn.  


**sagerose: **Jerusalem? that's original.  
**sagerose:** and yet not what i expected, somehow.  
**sagerose:** i'm here, the party can start.  
**sagerose:** Da Vinci, you can't be scanning so interestedly you don't notice me.  
**sagerose:** come ooooon, tell me more!  
  


She's not answering, and he's not about to go so far as simply manifesting himself over in Chaldea. He's still toeing a line with Avalon, and doing so carefully. Also, he doesn't want them to know he can just _show up_. Then they'll expect him to show up with reasonable frequency, and he'll have to keep explaining to them that he can't be friends, and why isn't Da Vinci answering him immediately.

He casts his vision toward Chaldea and has his answer straight off, watches Da Vinci secure Ritsuka in her coffin and take all the preliminary readings to confirm baselines and lifesigns. Merlin supposes this is a good enough reason for not answering, since he was apparently sleeping through all of her first attempts to reach him, but he still chafes at the waiting.

She wouldn't be sending Ritsuka on ahead if they hadn't made all their initial scans. Merlin drums his fingers off anything he can reach – stone, flower, knee, projected instant messenger window – and continues to watch as the leyshift initiates.

It takes _forever_ for Da Vinci to get back to him. In Chaldea, Mash is still standing by the coffins, just for a few moments longer – he sees Da Vinci wave her toward the consoles that would once have habitually been Doctor Roman's. Mash nods to Ritsuka's coffin, like a little bow, and pauses at the coffin full of Merlin's hard work very briefly. She tilts her head up – inhales – walks on by.

Da Vinci conducts the control room staff to their mid-mission monitoring stations with a sharply serene delight and then finally, finally, comes back to her own station.  
  


**ldavinci:** Ah, and where have you been?

**sagerose: **shepherding. don't ask.

**ldavinci:** Shepherding what? 

**sagerose:** what did i just say.

**ldavinci:** You're welcome to come over here and repeat it. 

**sagerose:** tower, prison, Avalon. c'mon, what'd you find? 

**ldavinci:** Oh, very well.  
  


Merlin has the distinct impression she still thinks he's bluffing, and he's not even going to bother to stop and check what her facial expression looks like. He just waits, escalating his fidgeting to tapping his fingers against each other while he isn't typing.  
  


**ldavinci:** It's something like a Singularity, but not quite. It fits the mold for the other remnant demon god pillars we've seen, however it's been in motion, and nearly a complete dead zone.  
**ldavinci:** We've been able to track where it's been, but never where it is. Until just recently, naturally.  
**ldavinci:** The Spirit Origin locked at the same time as the location solidified.

**sagerose:** well, that's leading! 

**ldavinci:** It certainly is.  
**ldavinci:** Complicating matters, we can get very little data back. Almost nothing that goes into it leaves again.

**sagerose:** but you managed to find him anyway.

**ldavinci:** Yes. It seems like he's actively sending a signal, whether he means to or not.  


It says something, Merlin thinks, that the man who peacefully walked to his death, intended to give up everything he was and would ever have had the potential to be, is somehow reaching back to them out of a black hole.  


**sagerose:** And you've sent Ritsuka along already.

**ldavinci:** We were hoping having a connection would clear up the signal. It has, to an extent, but we still can't read much. Only vague impressions of what's around her.  
**ldavinci:** What about you? You're clairvoyant, after all.  
**ldavinci:** Don't tell King Gilgamesh I said this, but you're better at it than he is.  


Merlin sits back, considering this, and tentatively starts looking. Past isn't his favorite to look at, but he can still follow a tenuous thread from Chaldea along the weave of time, back and back and back, to – hm. There's something overlaid on Jerusalem, isn't there? Something dark and light-absorbing, blocking out everything it's laid over, with a consistency like thick oil. It might be the distance – maybe if he was in that plane of existence he'd be able to see something – but as things stand Merlin can't see anything at all.

He's not used to it, and he doesn't like it.

  
**sagerose:** no.  
**sagerose:** whatever's happening over there, i can't see into it.  
  


Which means, because Merlin is very good, that nobody else will be able to. Concern begins to coil in Merlin's throat.  


**ldavinci:** That's not optimal.  
**ldavinci:** Are you sure there's no way you can be here, even a little?  
**ldavinci: **The less I need to split my focus, the better, and.  
**ldavinci:** Well, quite frankly, this isn't going to go off without a hitch, even for someone of my genius.  
**ldavinci:** Which means success or failure will be measured by Ritsuka, and our ability to respond to what does go wrong.  
**ldavinci:** All that to say: Whatever capability you do or do not have to be here, I will pretend I saw nothing, for the simple reason that we need your help more than  
**ldavinci:** brb  
  


This, too, concerns Merlin. He's not sure he's ever seen her use an abbreviation like that before.  


**sagerose:** get someone to sleep. in the control room is best; sedate them if you have to.  
**sagerose:** any above-average hallucinogen will also work.  
  


He leaves the data there, sending his gaze toward Chaldea again. There's been some kind of system issue, he sees, flickering red on one of the consoles, and Da Vinci has bent over someone else's shoulder to get a good look at what's going on. Merlin looks over _her_ shoulder, since he can, and finds that this console tracks the summonings done via Chaldea's data. **Summon Failed**, it reads, red and blocky. **Confirm sufficient power and try again**.

“Who was she trying for?” Da Vinci wants to know, intent.

“Rider,” says the woman at the console. “Uh...” There's a pause as data is examined. “Alexander.”

“If he's still in Chaldea, get him up here.” Da Vinci strides back across the control room as the woman she was talking to manipulates the intercom to send a polite message to echo through the halls. “He might be able to tell us something more.”

It takes time for anyone to get anywhere on foot in Chaldea. Da Vinci returns to her station, flicks through windows and windows of data; the entire control room has an air of determined focus.

Merlin returns to focus on his flowertop, suspecting he'll have an answer from Da Vinci soon.  
  


**ldavinci:** I don't know who could sleep in the middle of this.  
**ldavinci: **Apart from Tamamo-Cat, and I don't think she’s here.

**sagerose:** please, no divinity.

**ldavinci: **We'll ask Alexander if he minds sleep or sedation when he gets here, then.  
**ldavinci:** In the mean time, I think it will be easier if you watch.  
**ldavinci:** I assume you're doing that half the time anyway, honestly. 

**sagerose:** that would be telling!  
  


He has to maintain some mystery, after all.

Da Vinci doesn't say anything more that way, and Merlin looks lightly that way again, observing the business of the control room. Mash has the set of readings for Ritsuka's life-signs, everything that maintains her, each separate item watched and adjusted if necessary with careful deftness. She is not unaccustomed to holding Ritsuka's life in her hands, Merlin thinks; this is just a different way to go about it.

It's another few minutes before Alexander turns up. The younger version, of course, looking dazed despite the walk up from wherever he'd been before, red hair rumpled. “Someone asked for me?” he says through a yawn.

The tiredness is unusual, to be sure, but Merlin's happy to see it; he bets it won't be hard to get Alexander to go back to sleep, and then he himself won't have to fuss with independent manifestation.

Da Vinci raises her hand to beckon him over, barely looking up from her various data streams. “It sounded like Ritsuka tried to summon you.” 

“I guess so.” Alexander looks contemplative for a moment; then it's swallowed up by a yawn again. “Ngh... I mean, it felt like a summon, but then I ran into something, I guess. It's hard to say...”

“What sort of thing?” Da Vinci presses, with an urgent sort of curiosity. “Anything you can say may be useful.”

Alexander wobbles briefly, then plants his feet more solidly, a rider's stance with the determination to stay awake at least a little longer. “Whatever stopped me, it felt like it knew me,” he says, piecing thoughts together slowly. “And I think that was why. Anyone who that force could _see_ wouldn't be able to pass. The place our Master is... it's outside of any maps, isn't it?”

“You could say that.” Da Vinci considers it – glances around at everyone else – then back at Alexander. “Interesting. I wonder... Anyway, you look tired.”

Covering yet another yawn, Alexander nods. “I feel like I've run a hundred races,” he says. “Even that attempt was exhausting. D'you need me?”

Da Vinci smiles beatifically. “If you could take a nap in the corner, that'd be useful.”

“A nap?” Confusion colors Alexander's voice. “How does that help? It's not that I mind...”

“It's a fair question, but not one I have the time to explain,” Da Vinci says cheerfully. “Sleep. You'll be out of the way over by the coffins. We'll wake you if you're needed.”

It's a piece of luck that the failed summon took this much out of him, even if it means Ritsuka's unsupported for now. Merlin watches, still fidgeting impatience out through his fingertips, as Alexander tucks himself into the space between two coffins with his cloak wrapped around himself. His older self would never fit, Merlin thinks wryly, but fortunately for everyone the King of Conquerors rarely shows up in Chaldea. It's not good to have too many kings around at once.

Alexander's asleep inside of three minutes. Merlin unfolds himself to step forward into the youth's dreams, wraps a net of sleep and rest around him with the natural ease of the incubus. He only stays there a very few moments, long enough to see the world stretched out before, and the sea, the far-off sea like a grey cloak on the horizon, and behind, the rumble of the Ionian Hetairoi—

Merlin projects himself up and out, reaching past Alexander. He pushes the distant salt-scent of the sea out into the control room, and the faintest wind, and with it he sends himself, a shadow of a dream of a shadow, to stand in Chaldea.


	2. perchance to dream

The staff are too long accustomed to strangeness to do much more than glance up at the change in atmosphere when Merlin appears. He glances down at himself – yep, pink and translucent, excellent! Easier than a full manifestation, and no one will get the wrong idea this way.

“Hello, Merlin,” Da Vinci says, without herself looking up. “Nice to see you could join us.”

“Ah, I just had to take a look.” Merlin steps away from Alexander's slumbering form, patting him once on the head in passing as he goes to take a look at Coffin 4, which had better be doing its job appropriately.

It is. And more than that, there's a faint glow around the edges of it, seeping out around the lock. No one seems to have noticed yet; it's possible Merlin's only seeing it because there's some of his own thoughts there as well. Scents mingle, pine and salt-sea over the sweet temple's incense. Under his hand, even this dream-projection, Merlin feels heat within the metal.

He's only got half the story here, and it frustrates. Without being able to see where Romani is, without seeing the link between, there's still an element of uncertainty Merlin doesn't much like. And which version of the doctor is this? Something unified, he has to be, but is the balance right? More to the point, will it matter, once they have hold of his manifestation in the world of humans? The melding of the leyshift's stored data and the Spirit Origin that encompasses all of him, one way or another, should be enough.

Merlin isn't accustomed to _worrying_. It's novel and annoying.

“Senpai's heart rate is very high,” Mash says, “but I don't see that she's injured. She may just be escaping danger?”

“It's possible,” Da Vinci says. That's the comforting assumption. It's also possible, Merlin thinks, that Ritsuka's been captured by whatever enemy forces there are, which would definitely account for that— but if she has been, at least they're not going in for gratuitous mistreatment of prisoners yet. “I think the safe assumption would be a number of low-threat humanoid foes, possibly Caster-category if they're Servants.”

Some of the Servants, Merlin is distantly aware, have worked with Ritsuka on physical self-defense, since summoning before the leyline basecamp is established can be dicey. But usually she’d had Mash with her, and Mash is now and still having issues with her magical circuits. Merlin thinks over the pros and cons of attempting to meddle there when he really can't be considered any kind of doctor at all.

“I think we're still having time slippage,” says another one of the human staff, hunched so closely over his console it probably isn't good for his eyes or his back. “–I mean, worse than usual for before a base camp can be established. With this few readings, there's nothing to hook a ratio on.”

“That tallies,” Da Vinci says, “but is no less inconvenient. Keep trying, please, and let me know as soon as you stabilize even a little. Mash, this makes your work twice as vital, understand?”

_Yes_ echoes from both sides of the control room; then, “Um,” Mash adds. “Merlin? Can you please come look at this for a moment?”

Her voice is a little distant, a little shaky. Merlin ambles over – walks _through_ a chair just for the fun of the experience, and resolves not to do it again – and leans over her shoulder to look at her screen. “What've you got?”

Mash hesitates. Her eyes flicker from the readouts on Ritsuka's status, to Merlin's general pinkness over her shoulder, and back again. “I wanted to ask something,” she says. “You don't have to answer, but...”

He makes a go-on sort of gesture with an expansive sweep of his hand when she trails off. Mash nods, firms herself up. “Is this – black hole Singularity – related to the project you were working on in our dreams?” When her gaze darts sideways this time, it's to the array of coffins, where Merlin had just been. “It's just... there's something nostalgic and strange about the coffin Da Vinci says is broken, and she's been acting weird about this whole thing. Weird for Da Vinci. And someone had to signal us for help, for anything to get out, right? And it's probably someone powerful...”

Mash shakes herself, draws her drifting attention back to Ritsuka's readouts. They look steady enough to Merlin's eyes, but he can't fault her vigilance. “I know it's easy for people to talk themselves into believing things they really _want_ to be true,” she says then. “I keep trying not to think it. Merlin... _Is_ there anything you can say?”

“Plenty of things,” Merlin says, cheerfully flippant as a matter of course. He's very good at saying words, some of which may even make sense. But he sobers quickly enough. This matters to everyone here. That's why he hasn't talked about it to anyone but Da Vinci. “...Mash. What will you do if I say I'm trying to do something that you really, deeply want, and then it doesn't come to pass?”

“...I'd be sad, of course,” Mash says, still focused as well as she can be. “But... if it's what I think it is, then I'm already sad in the first place. I think humans need hope. You've watched everyone for a very long time, haven't you? What do people do when they do and don't have hope?”

They haven't confirmed anything for each other at all, in all these words. Merlin thinks about it, listening to the hums and chirps and murmurs behind him in the command room at large. A little hope really is a dangerous thing, in terms of what people will do for it and because of it. At the same time, that's what makes it so powerful. He thinks.

But he still doesn't know if coming out with this is a good idea, which means he'd like to say nothing at all and possibly distract Mash a little further – but he can't distract her unduly from Ritsuka, not now, and... well. Perhaps the hope would be fortifying?

“It really depends on the person,” Merlin says, having ultimately concluded nothing even in the length of unprodded silence Mash has left him. “Nihilism, you know? Sometimes, despair means people want to drag everyone else down with them. And sometimes, when there's nothing else left, humans make up their mind to do their best anyway. It goes both ways, and even after all this time I haven't figured out which makes the difference.” And he's still not sure, either, what to tell Mash, what will help her best. Even watching her determined face focused on the readouts isn't very revealing. There is almost nothing Mash can't out-stubborn, he knows: she has made the walls of Camelot stand firm against the greatest force of destruction Merlin has ever seen.

In fact, if she wants to, she can probably stare Merlin into confessing at least three of the things he’s hiding away. But she's asking, and isn't that something? When he asked her not to look, she took his request seriously.

Mash trusts him, and that more than anything is what's stilling his tongue on the vital strings of hope.

Despite his distantly desperate desires, he's not immediately saved by any sort of alarm to indicate that something is happening which would need his attention right now, immediately. Mash keeps her gaze fixed on Ritsuka's readouts. “See,” she says, pointing. On one piece of the display, the radar-like part Merlin can assume is intended to indicate Ritsuka's direct surroundings, there's a little blip just beside the center. “I can tell when someone else is very, very close to her, but normally we'd be able to scan the environs, see people and Servants coming. This close, I think this person must actually be touching Senpai.”

Quietly Merlin appreciates Mash's not prodding. She's asked the question. He'll figure out the answer.

The blip flickers out, then back in. Mash bites her lip for a moment. “I can't even tell if that's the same person, though,” she says, unhappily. “Her heart rate is elevated, but these readings can't tell me why. She's not bleeding, I think – her blood pressure is about the same, and if any serious injuries had been inflicted I would know.” To the right side of the screen there's an entire set of readouts for this which she indicates; all status lights are currently green. “But even then, I wouldn't be able to help her. This is... all I can do.”

Merlin's bitterly familiar with _that_ sentiment. To watch, sometimes guide, from a distance, and rarely if ever find it possible to touch, to do anything concrete and real to make the difference. And yet: he still doesn’t know what the right thing to say to Mash is, and so he stands there watching for a long time, as the tense readiness of the command room drags slowly into something wary but more settled. Ready for something to happen, and past the initial adrenaline.

Mash doesn’t say anything else to him, and she isn’t even looking at him, but all the same Merlin feels the weight of her regard.

“Yes,” he says abruptly, driven by the emotions he absolutely isn't having. “Yes, the two are related. It's—”

Only now that it's completely useless as a distraction, there's a low blare of alarm from behind him. “Summoning attempt again,” the same woman from before reports. “Caster class. Let's see... Nursery Rhyme?” The tap of keys. Merlin straightens, leaves Mash where she is and goes to see. It isn't _just_ because he's suddenly thought better of his uncharacteristic sharing of information. “It looks like... I think the summon succeeded, but there's something anomalous about the readings. There's clearly a draw of power, but it also seems like Nursery Rhyme is still here?”

“There are a lot of ways to screw up a summoning,” Merlin says, with a cheer that he only really remembers belatedly is probably inappropriate. “Let's see if we can find Nursery Rhyme, then!”

“I'm pulling surveillance feeds to one of the unused computers,” Da Vinci says. She hasn't come over, but when Merlin looks toward her she gestures in the direction she means. “Merlin, can you interact physically like this?”

“I don't know,” Merlin says, meaning yes, if he feels like it. He's a dream that he's convinced to be real beyond the bounds of the dreamer’s head, which means if he's inventive and careful, he can bend a whole lot of physical laws in his immediate vicinity. He’s already breaking the most basic ones.

“Great,” Da Vinci says brightly. “Get to it.”

It really wouldn't be wise to jeopardize the thing as a whole just to be spiteful at Da Vinci. And he's willing to bet she knows he won't, too. Merlin sighs and gets to it. The first panel of camera screens shows nothing useful; he taps experimentally at keys, and finally gives up and shoves his hand into the computer, convincing it with magic and dreams and pointed staring that it should show him what he wants. The layout statics and frizzes and finally settles on the view from one particular, relevant camera.

Nursery Rhyme is in the cafeteria, but she's not awake. It looks like she's passed out in the middle of food, in point of fact, and Emiya is picking her out of pudding and trying to set her to rights. She doesn't stir no matter how thoroughly he brushes pudding out of her hair and off her hat, and the tome Merlin is pretty sure she usually carries is nowhere in evidence. “She's unconscious. Looks like a partial summon,” he says, because he knows what those look like. “Her physical form, such as it is, is still here, but I'll bet Ritsuka has her spirit. Maybe her book, too. I don't see it with her.”

Da Vinci makes a thoughtful sound, but whatever conclusions she's about to draw are overwritten by another short alarm yelp. “Summoning attempt,” the woman reports, and Merlin really is going to remember her name one of these days. “Assassin class. Servant... uh. ...Servant Hassan?”

“Which one?” Da Vinci wants to know.

“Servant Hassan,” the woman repeats, more certainly this time. “That's all it will say.”

On a hunch, Merlin wiggles his fingers in the computer around until the pertinent camera feed comes up, just in time to see Hassan of the Cursed Arm slide out of a vent in one of the hallways, boneless in the way of the very flexible and the very tired. He flops down into the corner and passes out, and a slighter, purpler figure plops down on top of him – oh, that could have been bad, Merlin thinks, but Cursed Arm is wearing an over-robe, so Serenity doesn't touch him with bare skin at all. Serenity appears to subsequently pass out with her face on his shoulder.

“She might have gotten all of them,” Merlin says helpfully, and at that point Da Vinci comes over to see what he means.

“Ah,” she says with realization, when she's seen what he's looking at. “Ah, the _concept_ of Hassan– the figure, not any individual one. The Old Man of the Mountain is an idea, and one meant to fade in with the rest, isn't he? Where's Hundred Personas?”

Merlin shrugs; but at that point the Hassan in question staggers into view. She's acting either drunk or sleep-deprived, but she's on her feet, one hand braced on the wall as she moves along toward her fellows. “Alexander said he felt the act of being seen was what stopped him,” Merlin says thoughtfully then. “Seen, or recognized?”

“It's a good question.” Da Vinci watches Hundred Personas for a moment more and then steps back, glancing around for someone spare. She finds no one, owing to the concept of a skeleton crew, and returns to her station for the intercom instead. “Emiya, can you bring Nursery Rhyme up to the control room? Route through the living quarters, I need the Hassans as well and two of them are out cold in the hall.”

There's a long stretch of silence, presumably while Emiya either listens and complies wordlessly – unlikely – or finds the intercom panel on his side of things. Merlin watches Hundred Personas sink down the wall to a tense crouch, teeth bared, the image of a woman struggling to stay awake and almost winning. Then the intercom buzzes a short tone. “On my way,” Emiya reports. “Bringing an extra set of hands. Tell us what this is about when we get there.”

“Everyone wants explanations,” Da Vinci says, and from anyone else it would be a resigned statement. She's only matter-of-fact, bordering on cheerful. She likes explanations, when she has time for them. “Bring a tarp if you've got one.”

“Hah? –Oh, Serenity.” Not that Servants can exactly die properly, here and now, but most of them find it painful and inconvenient to be discorporated suddenly, and Serenity's poison doesn't turn itself off. “Understood.”

The intercom connection clicks off. “Hey,” Merlin says, consideringly, “does the First hang out here, at all?”

“Sometimes,” Da Vinci says. She's bent over her console again while she's waiting for the errant Servants to show up. “Chaldea's systems show his power draw more often than we actually see him, let's put it that way. Can you find him?”

“I'll look,” he says, and consults the computer. Flicking through camera feeds doesn't net him anything that looks like it could be the First Old Man of the Mountain, or a remnant of him – Merlin half expects to find a ruinous sword leaning in a corner with Death sleeping on top of it, but there's no such sign. He steps back from the computer and leans into his sight instead, sends his gaze out farther and farther, skimming the halls of Chaldea in a rush. Everything's more or less as it should be. If the First among the Hassans is here, Merlin can't see him.

Then again, if anything could hide from him, wouldn't it be the first among assassins, the one who embodies them all?

Well, as long as the First isn't murdering undeserving people in his sleep, Merlin supposes it doesn't really matter for the moment. They'll find him, or they won't, or maybe he's elsewhere entirely. “Nothing,” he says out loud, absently reporting to Da Vinci, and pulls his sight back in, lazily trailing here and there. The cafeteria, with the last of the pudding cleared up. The hallway where the Hassans are collapsed, now featuring Emiya and a tarp, carefully wrapping up Hassan of the Serenity before putting her over his shoulder.

Hundred Personas is refusing to fall all the way over. Emiya's companion, a Saber in familiar blue and white, has Nursery Rhyme secure against her hip, and as Merlin watches she goes to at least offer Hundred Personas her free arm, some stability if the Hassan won't accept being carried, which it looks like she won't.

Artoria is mannerly even to assassins. Merlin has a vague fond thought about her internalization of chivalry and then settles himself back in the control room, fully within his dream of himself again.

If he mentions to Da Vinci that he'd rather not Artoria know he was here, will Da Vinci actually respect that or tell Artoria first thing? This isn't a matter for Romani, after all, it'd just be a thing about Merlin, and he's taken pains to make himself annoying if not antagonistic. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Merlin suspects Da Vinci is going to be less inclined to do favors for him, specifically.

The alternative is that Merlin makes himself invisible and hopes no one mentions him. Yeah, that sounds like a better idea. If Da Vinci _doesn't_ know what's going on, she may keep quiet at first just to be on the safe side, and it only needs to work once, as long as Artoria doesn't stick around in the immediate vicinity. Which she shouldn't. The issue at hand is Jerusalem, not Britain.

“Still nothing,” Merlin says, of the First Hassan. “I'll keep an eye open, though, and let you know if he turns up.”

“Keep it near the lower half of your list of priorities,” Da Vinci advises. “As long as Ritsuka has the Hassan summoned, and nothing's wrong here, finding a way to link our times more securely is the most important part. Status report, all. Anything new?”

An array of voices report in, one at a time, only once accidentally talking over each other. Time differential still spinning wildly, impossible to perfectly nail down while they have _no data_ to hook into. No leys, no readings, nothing except the thin tether of Ritsuka herself. Senpai still in healthy, functional form, though with occasional heart rate spikes that track with excitement or unharmed combat. No further summoning attempts, and systems apparently near capacity with just Nursery Rhyme and Hassan. Since normally the systems can support a few more Servants than that via Ritsuka, Merlin suspects the summoned Hassan counts for all four.

“I hate the saying, 'no news is good news,'“ Da Vinci says conversationally, straightening up and sweeping her gauntleted arm wide to indicate the whole of the control room. “We know just enough to tell us how much we don't know, and that there's more waiting in the shadows. Any piece of news would be better, at this rate.” She glances over at Merlin. “Any further thoughts on the fact of sight or recognition preventing summonings?”

Merlin had gotten distracted by the impending issue of his king. Now he shrugs lightly. “The Grail's playing a game of Red Light, Green Light?”

Da Vinci does not look impressed with this masterful piece of deduction.

Somewhere behind him, Merlin hears the door, and two voices in conversation, and his heart in distant Avalon jumps from his chest to lodge itself in his throat. Accordingly, Merlin slams himself out of the visible spectrum. 

“What did you—” Da Vinci starts, and stops at the approach of multiple Servants. Merlin edges out of the way. Da Vinci frowns slightly, clearly trying to tease the puzzle out, and it's this expression she's wearing as she nods to Emiya and Artoria. Hundred Personas is leaning on Artoria's shoulder, nearly a full head taller than the king and supported effortlessly anyway. She appears about to pass out on her feet. “Thanks for bringing them.”

“What affects our Master affects us all,” Emiya notes. He has one Hassan over each shoulder, and is less careful about how he settles Cursed Arm than Serenity. She's carefully wrapped to prevent accidental skin contact; but even so, Emiya's careful to lean her slight form in an out of the way corner, just in case. Straightening up, he reaches back to Hundred Personas.

She bares her teeth at him. “Don't need your help,” she says through a yawn that gives the lie to that. Emiya backs up with hands and eyebrows raised, as if to suggest that he wants no part of this, please and thank you.

Artoria steadies her one-handed, Nursery Rhyme barely moving on the opposite hip, and looks a question at Da Vinci. “How may we help from here?” she wants to know. “Archer is correct.”

Da Vinci considers the King of England, and finally extends her arms. “I'll take her off your hands,” she says, reaching for the sleeping child. “Unfortunately, it's all going to be fairly technical from here! Not that I don't appreciate the offer, but you know what they say about many cooks.”

Handing over Nursery Rhyme, Artoria subsequently turns a quizzical look on Emiya.

Emiya snorts. “Spoils the broth,” he says. “I take your meaning. I still want that explanation, but I can wait if you're urgently busy.”

“The short version is, this Singularity has so far allowed only partial summons, and appears to have a bias to the unrecognized and unnameable,” Da Vinci says, summing all this up as she balances Nursery Rhyme carefully. She tries the hip hold, appears to find it not quite so natural as she was hoping, and adjusts. “Alexander, for instance, couldn't be summoned at all.”

“Huh.” Emiya considers this. “I haven't heard of anything that could cause that.”

“Neither have we!” Da Vinci says brightly. “It's a mystery.”

“We'll get out of your hair, then,” he says. “We're not going to be much use here, anyway.” His gaze slants over to Artoria. “Yeah?”

“I concur,” she says, helping Hundred Personas to a nearby unused chair as she does. “My story, at least, is far too recognizable if the criteria involve persistence of identity.” The assassin opts to lean on the back of the chair rather than sit down in it; Artoria stands back only when she's sure Hundred Personas is stable, offers a polite nod of her head and moves back toward Emiya.

“One quick note,” Da Vinci says, which stops Emiya half-turned to go. “It occurs to me, Mr. Nameless Archer, that you may be a decent candidate for summoning to this Singularity. Systems are at capacity, but be aware that may be in the near future.”

“Mm. Got it.” Emiya nods, short and sharp. “Want me to carry a message if it happens?”

“Yes, please,” Da Vinci says, cheered by how rapidly he catches on. She pats Nursery Rhyme's hat. “Remind Ritsuka to dismiss and summon again every so often so we can get reports, until we get the lack of data sorted out.”

“Understood.” Emiya looks at Artoria. “...what is it?”

When he had stopped, she had too, and now her head is tilted back, her mouth opened slightly as she sniffs at the air, her eyes narrowed in distant thought. At Emiya's voice she starts, turns, and her demeanor shifts back to plainly businesslike. “Ah— yes. Let's go.”

As they head out, Merlin hears one further snippet of conversation. “What was that about?” Emiya wants to know.

“It's nothing,” Artoria says. “I thought I smelled something familiar, that's all.”

Da Vinci settles Nursery Rhyme in her own seat and then turns her attention on Hundred Personas. “Can you answer some questions for us?” she asks, and then has to repeat the question about questions twice more in order to get a sensible response. The irony of this is not lost on Merlin.

“I'm fine,” Hundred Personas insists, after the third try. “I'm awake. What... what do you want to know? Mmph.” She yawns again, bites her tongue, and startles more sharply awake for the space of a moment or two. “I'm awake.”

“We think this is result of a partial summoning,” Da Vinci says. “Currently, my hypothesis is that Ritsuka has summoned the _concept_ of the Old Man of the Mountain, rather than any specific one of you. Are you at all cognizant of being in another place simultaneously?”

“Uh,” says Hundred Personas, as if from a distance. “Don't. Don't know. Feels like part of me is gone.” Her lean on the chair dips dangerously, but she recovers herself. “Not all. Used to only part of a deck, but this is. Somewhere I can't reach.” In some vague concession to her current issues staying upright, she folds herself over the back of the chair, pats the seat. It would definitely be more useful to _sit_ in the chair, but apparently she’s stubborn.

“Hmm.” Da Vinci looks over at Nursery Rhyme, then at the other two carefully settled Hassans. “Well. I can tell we're going to have to take readings. When you say somewhere you can't reach, do you mean that your other personas feel as though they've been completely removed, or that you're still cognizant of them, but they're... say, on a very high shelf?”

“Shelves're easy,” Hundred Personas says, muffled, into the chair. “Worse than that. Not dead though.” There's a heavy sigh, a shiver Merlin can see even from here, and her head drops as though she's sleeping for a moment before she jerks it up. “Nngh. Where am I again? Thought I saw...”

She doesn't fill in the rest of the thought. “What did you think you saw?” Da Vinci asks. She fusses with her gauntlet, reconfigures it into something that looks more like thick dowsing rods, each one humming with a faint blue light.

Merlin remembers to knock himself back into the visible spectrum. This time it's a slightly different shade of virulent pink. He leans over Da Vinci's shoulder to see what she's doing, and also to see how long it takes her to notice him. His current working theory is that she can't be mad at him if she's busy with science.

“City,” Hundred Personas says distantly. “Soldiers. Everyone's lost.” Merlin kind of expects more, but she subsides there.

“About what I expected,” Da Vinci says, and leans forward to run the rods along the Hassan's form, an inch or so from touching. “So nice to see you've decided to join us again, Merlin.” Ah, she wasn't startled at all. More's the pity.

“Can't stay away,” Merlin says cheerfully. “Familiar city?”

“Maybe.” Hundred Personas presses her face against the chair's back. “Not right. It _isn't_. S'wrong.”

“Hmmm.” Da Vinci taps the rods together, considering as they shed gentle vanishing sparks, and shakes her head. “Not enough information. Let's see what the rest of you have for me.”

Merlin trails Da Vinci at a distance he estimates is just close enough to be a _little_ annoying, watching with genuine curiosity as she waves the scanning rods over each passed-out servant in turn. Each time there's a slightly different chirp and hum, and each time she eventually brings the rods back to eye them thoughtfully before moving on. She leans over Hassan of the Serenity last, a little more careful than she had been about the others.

“Thoughts?” Merlin asks her, while she's still considering the rods in her hands as though to divine further meaning from them.

“That of all the possible explanations for why you vanished a few moments ago, the most likely is that you're avoiding Artoria,” Da Vinci says absently. “Stand still, please, I need a few different controls and you're one of them.”

Merlin's emotions — the ones he isn’t having — seize up with a lurch, which means he stays perfectly still while Da Vinci passes the rods over him as well. “It's not an overall stable connection I have,” he says offhandedly, as she waves one rod _through_ his shoulder, and he makes a face at her. “I think you're reading a little much into it.” And he rather wishes she would stop.

“Oh, am I?” She clicks her tongue thoughtfully, and when she looks up from the rods the look she gives him is long and measuring, and more present than a genius lost in her work usually is. “Ah, maybe I am. There's more to be concerned with right now, anyway.” Terribly, damningly, she lets it lie there, with Merlin certain that she has not at all given the idea up, and is only biding her time.

Which is probably why she did that. Grudgingly, Merlin is forced to concede that she is very good at bothering him. This is why he doesn't get to know people.

And yet: he's still here.

Da Vinci circles the command room, scanning people as she goes – two vanilla humans, Mash, Alexander, and finally herself. “There,” she says when she's done, and starts reconfiguring the rods. “That ought to be enough to go on. Let's see what we've got.”

If Merlin tries to convince her he really isn't avoiding Artoria, she'll absolutely take it as concession that he is. Still, the troubling concept that she's seen his intent nags at him.

The rods latch together, expand into a frame with glowing blue chunks along the edges, and at Da Vinci's command light spans between the metal to create a display. Silhouettes of each of the people she's scanned cycle through, along with waveforms that Merlin can't make sense of immediately. Da Vinci flicks through each image and readout with barely a few seconds' pause in between each, apparently processing them simply that fast; then she does it again in the reverse order, humming to herself while she does.

“Well!” she says cheerily. “At the very least I know more than I did. It won't help us secure the time, but we might be able to get a slightly closer look.” She beckons to Merlin, rearranges the screen to show human silhouettes. 

“All right,” Merlin says obligingly, because she is bright with the desire to tell him all about it. “What am I looking at?”

“I'm glad you asked!” Da Vinci gestures – stops – pulls a laser pointer out of a pocket in her skirt, and resumes using that to indicate. “These two are our technicians. You can see magical circuits, but not very many of them, and not tied to anything. But when you look at me–”

She gestures, flicks the screen over to a silhouette that now looks suspiciously like the Mona Lisa. Now that it's still instead of being flipped past at high speed, Merlin can see there's something trailing off of it, a spider's thread off to one side. “Normally,” she says, indicating this, “these bonds are impossible to see visually, and I had to apply some heavy filtering just to make them this visible. This is the bond of the summoning, what's feeding me the basic level of mana. This is located in Chaldea itself. Alexander is more or less the same.” She shows Merlin this, as well: a slighter silhouette, with a slightly thicker thread. “The summonings are a little different,” Da Vinci allows graciously.

“Then that leaves our anomalies,” Merlin prompts. Da Vinci explaining things is fun for the whole family, and nothing appears to be going wrong in the command room, so until something changes, their waiting game has time and at least some attention to spare for this. “Mash, and the unconscious Servants.”

“'m _awake_,” Hundred Personas says determinedly, and sits down hard on the floor.

“The partially summoned Servants,” Merlin amends, because now is not the time to pick more fights than strictly necessary.

“And you,” Da Vinci says, nudging Merlin in the ribs. Her elbow sinks at least an inch into his dream-form, and Merlin steps to the side, rubbing his side gingerly. It still feels downright peculiar. “So, Mash.” There's almost no visible thread on the display she shows next. “Sorry, Mash, I need you to stay where you are– I'll show you this later if you're interested!”

“Thank you,” floats back over from her side of the command room.

With that piece of thoughtfulness settled, Da Vinci forges onward. “Mash's contract with Ritsuka isn't very visible like this, because she doesn't need any help to maintain her corporeal form,” Da Vinci explains. “There's just enough to maintain that there _is_ a bond between the two of them. I would hypothesize this is going to be more substantial if Mash is in a Singularity–”

But that's off the table for now, pending whatever's going on with Mash's magical circuits, and Da Vinci pauses there. “Anyway, I'll test it later,” she says with a light shrug, and moves on to a silhouette she has helpfully shaded pink. “I'm sure I don't need to tell you who this is.”

“Ah, definitely Leonidas!” Merlin says, of himself. He's pretty sure he's contractually obligated to do so, never mind the fact he's not involved in any contracts right now.

“Yes,” Da Vinci agrees. “Leonidas. See, Leonidas actually has the same kind of bond here.” She highlights the thread with the laser pointer, gestures with a quick circle of her wrist. Merlin looks where she's pointing; it just looks like a single strand of paleness against a dark background, changing the shape of the silhouette. “But, where I can trace myself and Mash and Alexander, this bond doesn't seem to go anywhere. It simply ends, right there. Except that it can't end, because I can register a transmission of power.”

“In other words,” Merlin says, “Leonidas is connected to something that doesn't exist in this world, but isn't severed by the simple fact of not being in the same world.”

“Precisely,” Da Vinci says dryly. “Goodness, Merlin, it's almost like you know something about this yourself.”

He really can't help grinning, and then he stops it the moment after. This is a terrible habit to get into. “Since the reverse side of the world is effectively just – _under_,” he says, miming with his hands as if he's shoving something under a blanket. The side-effect of this gesture is that it looks like he's indicating something much cruder. “It doesn't have very far to stretch, on the whole. Except for being a world away. Anyway, what about the Hassan?”

“The same principle, but much less robust,” she says, flicking through slides and finally segmenting the screen, so the three of them can be displayed at once. The silhouettes tint after a moment, color-coded for clarity. “See? The same truncation, but longer and threadier, as if they're going much further away. And with these, we also have to consider that this is technically a secondary summoning– look, you can see the tether to Chaldea just there.” The laser pointer inscribes flickering butterfly-arcs of joyful analysis. “Normally, when Ritsuka summons, the power goes through her, right? If a Servant here leyshifts with her, their form is maintained by Chaldea's systems, but when she uses the ley-power tapped at base camp, she's the tether and conduit. The holder of the contracts. The Servant _disappears_ from Chaldea and is re-summoned with her. But these, Hassan and Hassan and Hassan and Nursery Rhyme, they've bypassed the unsummon stage right to the re-summon stage.” Da Vinci collapses the laser pointer and stashes it away, and starts disassembling her screen back into its component gauntlet. Servos and crystals hum and whir as her machinery works.

“That's unusual,” Merlin says, aiming for understatement of the decade at least.

Da Vinci nods agreement as her gauntlet puts itself back together around her waiting hand. “In a traditional summoning powered by the Holy Grail, the Grail would prepare a vessel and choose the master, and the master would call, using a catalyst to indicate which Heroic Spirit they reached for. Place and intent and personal compatibility all matter for that. But even that vessel can't contain a Heroic Spirit's full power. Hence the aspects. We do a little better here in Chaldea, not being limited by the mana generation of one single mage– but the concept is still the same. You're an anomaly.” She eyes Merlin sidelong, then raps her knuckles on the back of the gauntlet. Something that looks very like a USB key ejects from it.

Merlin spreads his hands wide and bows theatrically. “I do a very good impersonation of a Caster, you know,” he says. “So good that the previous Grand Caster attempted to pass his title on to me, despite how inconvenient it is I'm not dead yet.” Something occurs to him, and he glances speculatively toward the waiting, creating coffin. Maybe he can give it _back_, when all’s said and done.

Da Vinci raises her eyebrows at him, but doesn't comment, only beckons him with her back to her station, where she plugs the USB into her computer and starts sorting through cryptically named files with peculiar filetypes. One outlier of a file is just a standard MP4 video, which Da Vinci opens and plays, and which proves to be a short clip of Hassan of the Hundred Personas insisting she's awake with her eyes firmly shut. “I don't have this, of course,” Da Vinci says cheerfully.

“Of course you don't,” Merlin agrees, with equal cheer. “Where were you going with the exposition I already know?”

“I'm just contextualizing for you, in case you forgot something,” she says, still as brightly as ever. She's pleased with herself, which probably contributes to the pontificating. “Anyway! The long and the short of it is that the way these four have been summoned is like someone layered another summon on top of the initial one. I think Ritsuka has summoned Assassin Hassan, from the Assassins Hassan instead of the Spirits Hassan, and because they've gone straight to her and not routed through Chaldea, they aren't limited by our communication issues. However, this also means we can get only the barest of useful data back from them through Chaldea's sensors.” She pauses, probably for dramatic effect. “Unless a genius with a highly skilled grasp of magic steps in, of course.”

“Of course!” Merlin makes a show of applauding gently, fingertips just tapping the heel of his other palm. “So you manually scanned the outgoing bonds. Let's see what you've got!”

“Working on it,” Da Vinci carols merrily, and starts sorting data. Merlin hangs over her shoulder, fascinated.

Half the files are noise, plain and simple: a low roar, a scattering of static over something bright and blue-white. “These will be the Chaldea half of the readings,” Da Vinci explains, setting them aside into their own folder. “Since there's only the power feed on this end. Let's see about these... oh, these two go together, I think...”

The data she managed to scrape from the assortment of Hassans, Merlin learns, is fragmented, and needs to be jigsawed together. Nursery Rhyme's is more helpful, to an extent. Da Vinci excavates images of stone, of ice in motion, of a soldier in old, old style armor lying flat and motionless. There's an impression of red with fuzzing around the edges, oddly rainbowed and fluxing. “Computers really don't know what to do with emotional data, yet, do they,” Da Vinci says, touching the screen with an odd wistfulness about her. “This all might be Ritsuka, but it's hard to tell.”

She sits back after a little while, glances back and up at Merlin. “This is going to take some time,” she says frankly. “Which we seem to have for now, but that may not last. Promise not to break my computer, and I'll trade with you – I want to set up longer-term sensors on Cursed Arm and Nursery Rhyme.”

“Sure, I don't mind,” Merlin says easily, and he drops himself into her seat as she gets up. He doesn't get the materiality _quite_ right at first and grimaces as the chair passes through parts of him he'd prefer it didn't.

Da Vinci laughs quietly as she starts digging through her pockets and moves off. Merlin, having his suspicions about how big her pockets actually are, leaves her to it, and starts playing with the data she's already gathered. It's easier when he gives up on the mouse and sticks his dream-hands into the computer again, moves images and audio and ambiguously magical waveforms around by will and hope and a little bit of creative electron-fudging.

All told, though, there isn't much. What Da Vinci’s gleaned amounts to several fragments, images of shadows and stone and in one instance water, each no bigger than a passing glance. The sound of blades, the gasp of a man's breath leaving his body.

Some of the shadows are people, Merlin realizes on a second pass. Phantom spirits, more than likely; not completely there, but not gone enough to be true nothingness. None of the images are of Ritsuka, which is both reassuring and not at all. He's sure the Servants would focus on her if she'd been injured, but a negative is impossible to prove.

When he's done he stands up and slouches over to Da Vinci. She has sensors that look of a piece with her gauntlet secured to Nursery Rhyme and Cursed Arm. She hasn't even tried to touch Serenity, and is now considering Hundred Personas from a safe distance, another set of similar sensors held cupped in her hand. “The data might be valuable,” Da Vinci says thoughtfully, at Merlin's approach, “but she's really very tired.”

“I'm not tired,” Hundred Personas says automatically, despite the fact she can only be called vertical in the loosest sense of the word. “I'm awake.”

Da Vinci gestures to Merlin. Curiously, Merlin steps into arm's reach of Hundred Personas, focusing extra hard on being insubstantial, and is disappointed but not surprised when she knifes him in the ankle. “You see my problem,” Da Vinci says.

Merlin steps away from the faint distant pinch of metal and shakes his foot out, wincing. “I do! That _is_ inconvenient. Anyway, I put everything together for you. It's not as revolutionary as you might have hoped.”

“It's more than we had,” she says, and goes back to her computer; and, assuming that she'll be well invested in that for the foreseeable future, Merlin skirts around Hundred Personas to amble around the rest of the command room and see what’s worth seeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the topic of Emiya: 
> 
> As much as he'd probably try to go to pains to stay nameless, because he's That Asshole, I estimate it'd take like a week before the nagging wore him down enough to cough up something for them to call him. There are _how_ many Archers on call?


	3. the thing with feathers

So: Merlin ambles. He peers over shoulders, investigating displays with data he can't quite read, though mostly for laziness and an unwillingness to focus on any one thing long enough to decrypt it. Because he's more invested in the success of this mission than in causing trouble, he doesn't experiment with how it feels to other people to have a piece of the dream of him pass through their limbs. He pauses over Alexander, who's still slumbering, Merlin's magic still wrapped around him like a fishing-net with weights instead of floats; lingers a long while next to the softly humming Coffin 4.

Merlin wants this to work, so much it surprises even him, so badly he can taste how bitter the disappointment of a mistake would be. And it's– no. He's very good. He knows what he's doing, and he's done his work well, by dream and by seam. They're going to get Romani Archman back out of this, one way or another.

He just hates the feeling of wanting something this much, not least because he knows there's something else under it; something with four horns and the reproachful eyes of a sacrifice denied. Merlin exhales heavily, puts the symbolism someplace to not look at, and turns away from the scent of frankincense and desert heat. The scent that, as a dream-projection who isn't even really there, he probably shouldn't strictly be able to smell.

Ah, there's nowhere really to run. Back to Avalon, maybe, but Merlin needs to see this through. And to do that, he has to be in this command room, full of people who keep trying to know him and refuse to stop.

He does another circuit of the room, and finally drifts toward Mash, since he supposes he can't go anywhere else, and he did rather leave in the middle of a conversation. For good reason – better than some of those he's concocted to get out of uncomfortable conversations before – but he'd made up his mind and not followed through.

“Hello, Merlin,” Mash says softly when he comes near enough that she can see him from the corner of her eye.

She doesn't ask after what they were talking about. The idea itches at Merlin nevertheless, potentially even _because_ she hasn't said anything about it yet, hasn't pressed him further. Merlin shifts his shoulders uncomfortably and leans down. “Any updates?”

“Not much,” she murmurs. She slants her eyes briefly sideways, then focuses again. Sometimes Merlin is _very_ reminded of Galahad. It's in the little mannerisms as much as the determination to protect – the things he wouldn't have expected, the things that sometimes hit like a brick of familiarity.

Then sometimes she's so much herself, cheery and carried away with Ritsuka, that Merlin forgets she carries anyone else with her. ...Ah, well, there's a reason he wasn't _constantly_ in company with them while they were all in Babylonia.

“About the thing you were asking me about earlier,” Merlin starts. He nearly loses his nerve, and it's only the fact Mash is more focused on Ritsuka than him that really lets him keep going without either making a hash of it or bolting back to see if Hundred Personas is feeling any less stabby. “...Yeah. The whole thing has to do with Doctor Roman. That's why I was in everyone's dreams. I found enough memories and thoughts of Romani that Da Vinci could analyze them all and distill a Spirit Origin signature out of them.”

He thinks of David; he thinks of the young Solomon, offering Merlin his braid as easy as that. That shape of the braid had stayed where everything else became stardust and cotton candy. Merlin wonders – but he barely knows what to wonder, about that, only thinks that it may be the lion's share of what Da Vinci used.

“So that's how Da Vinci found this Singularity.” Mash bites her lip for a moment, rubs one eye behind her glasses. “She– you found it because Doctor Roman's there, isn't he? But... what does that mean for him?”

Merlin won't know until he lays eyes on the problem, not for certain, but they have their plans, he and Da Vinci. “The version of him that's there is probably a phantom spirit,” he says. “Or something. But we have ways around that. ...It's pretty technical, so I'll spare you the details. Don't worry too much about it.”

Mash's mouth turns down a little. “...All right,” she says. “It's just that... Merlin, you said part of the reason you didn't want to tell me was that you might get my hopes up and then it might not work. So...”

“Da Vinci has since reminded me that she's a genius,” Merlin says, straightening up and flapping his hand at her. It's more complicated than that; he's definitely trying to make her feel better, right now. She can probably tell. “It's true that I don't know exactly _how_ you're going to get him back, but he'll be back if I have to drag him back here myself.”

It's true that he'd said, before, that it might not work. That actually hasn't changed. Frankly, the bit about dragging Romani back himself might just be so much posturing on Merlin's part. There are still factors Merlin can't predict, and the simple nature of human fallibility, and the risk that all the magic in the world just might not be enough to resurrect the dead.

But Romani Archaman isn't entirely dead, after all, and Merlin will stake his title on it.

Mash is quiet for a long time. When Merlin peers at her he finds that her eyes are damp, and she has to blot under her glasses again, but she's determinedly sticking to her task. “Thank you,” she says, voice watery. “I mean— even if it doesn't work. Thank you for trying.”

Merlin's mind goes utterly blank about the correct way to respond to this. It hadn't occurred to him that the effort alone would be worth thanks. Especially not when an almost-success will be more painful than a failure. “...It's really the least I could do,” he says, which is a lie. “I mean, I was watching the whole time, you know? Seeing that kind of self-sacrificing idiocy is enough to make me all kinds of angry. And I can't yell at him unless he's alive.”

Sidelong, Mash gives him a supremely dubious look. “That's a long way to go just because you're angry,” she says. It doesn't have any judgment in it. She's really very good at that, just stating _facts_.

The angry is really only one reason. Merlin shrugs. He's not about to give her anything else, not at the risk of being seen and known and dragged one painful step closer into friendship. Mash is already a miracle, with her restored life. She'll have a normal human lifespan; and for Merlin, that much is _still_ too short. “I get bored,” he says, instead of any of his actual thought process. “Really, really bored.”

Mash reaches sideways and pats his shoulder. Her aim isn't perfect – her hand sinks just a little bit into the substance of him – but the sentiment is at least slightly appreciated. “Even if that's all it is,” she says, “it means a lot to all of us. To me. So... thank you, Merlin.”

Merlin straightens up and backs away so she can't be even vaguely physically affectionate to him again. “Really,” he says. “Don't mention it.” She doesn't turn to look at him, and Merlin doesn't linger.

He skitters back across the room to where Da Vinci is. Her ongoing debate with Hundred Personas appears to have been settled by tossing a sensor into the half-awake Assassin's lap, and Da Vinci herself is at her computer, cheerfully sorting fragmentary impressions into cascading windows. There are a few more snapshots, Merlin notes, all still very piecemeal. The impression of a young woman in shadow and 1920s fashion; black folds that might be Ritsuka's Mystic Code, might be something else entirely. “It's nice to have any data at all,” Da Vinci says thoughtfully, “but this is almost less useful than a kaleidoscope.”

“Well, she's alive and making progress,” Merlin says brightly. “She's summoned _and_ made a friend. Probably.”

“Mmhm,” Da Vinci agrees absently, rotates an image a full 180° in hope, and finally tabs over to an assortment of audio files. Some of them are no more than static, but that doesn't appear to be deterring her from running them through various noise-reducing algorithms. Merlin lingers mostly because she isn't harassing him, but after she's set another to processing and it hangs, whirring ominously, she glances back and up at him. “So, how long will you be sticking around?”

Her gaze is concerningly sharp for someone who's just been multitasking three ways from Sunday. Merlin shrugs automatically, noncommittal. He's not giving her his word on _anything_ yet, especially because he himself hadn't thought necessarily that far. “Long enough!” he says, as brightly as he knows how. “We'll see how long everything here holds my interest.”

“Oh, of course,” Da Vinci says wryly. “Long enough to yell at the fruits of your labors, I hope.”

Yes, she was definitely listening to him talk to Mash. Merlin very carefully doesn't make any face that might imply to Da Vinci that she's scored anything on him; he just smiles instead, broad and cheery. “Oh, who knows,” he says airily. “I might decide he's already paid his dues.” And anyway, if he sticks around here very long, someone's going to explain to Romani what Merlin did, and then Merlin's going to have to explain to the good doctor and king _why_, exactly he had felt it necessary to drag him out of oblivion, and...

Well, the anger is one reason. Merlin doesn't want to chance that the man who was King Solomon will see right through to everything else, sheep and id and memories, and feelings braided with stars. So leaving before the coffin opens is probably the wisest decision. Maybe...

No. No maybes. Merlin's going to be smart about this, especially since he's been so terrible about some of his other lies. He'll leave once the leyshift is confirmed.

Da Vinci is still watching him, when Merlin takes himself out of this internal contemplation, and there's something about the way she does which makes Merlin almost feel she's seen into his head, followed his thought processes for herself. It's unsettling, how the people around here keep doing that. He'd really like them to stop, honestly.

“What?” he says to her, spreading his hands and shrugging. “Once he's secure, my job's done. This whole thing doesn't mean we're going to be friends.”

“I wonder,” she says, very quietly, with a soberness he doesn't commonly see from her. “How many people would you move heaven and earth for, Merlin?”

“I think you'll find the answer to that is no one,” Merlin says, with a light sort of calm, matching her undertone. This is a conversation he really doesn't need the rest of the command room listening in on, especially since chances are good someone's about to get nasty. “Let's not forget one of the reasons for my distant abode is that I saw the roads that lead to Camlann, and did nothing about it. If I wouldn't pull the skies down for that, no one else is going to make the short list, Da Vinci. I was bored with tragedy, that's all it is. Whatever you think you've caught me at, you're putting human feelings on something that _isn't human_. Remember that, and let's keep our eyes on our work, huh?”

Da Vinci folds her hands in her lap and stares at him, the mirror to her famed work except for the disapproving line to her mouth, the lidded steeliness of her eyes. But she says nothing, and time drags, and she still says nothing. Merlin wonders what this is supposed to achieve, except that he's vaguely squirming under the look.

In the end she doesn't say anything. She turns around and looks at her readings again, and Merlin is left bemused and perhaps a little bereft, wondering what just happened. He's certain, in a distant sort of way, that he's missed something; that Da Vinci has seen something Merlin didn't know he had on display.

And he remembers, too, that for all that it was only Mash and Ritsuka in Babylonia, Doctor Roman and Da Vinci were watching all the while. What the away team saw, the command staff saw, too, and Merlin can't begin to guess what they might have taken from it.

...anyway, it's fine if Da Vinci's done talking to him. Merlin shrugs and ambles off to go peer over Mash's shoulder instead. It's here that he lingers for the next period of time, watching the variances in Ritsuka's vital statistics with Mash's quiet and thankfully speechless presence, and as such he's one of the first to see it, when Ritsuka makes contact.

First is her heart rate, picking up – a leap, a skip, arrhythmia and then pounding. Mash does a quick skim over other data streams, but there's no signs of distress. It's a happy heartbeat, the speed that comes of excitement. Mash bites her lip, slants a glance to her side at Merlin and then back. She doesn't ask, but Merlin knows what she's thinking. It's impossible not to think it, knowing what's probably waiting, what's a pretty possible source for that joy.

“_Oh_,” Mash says a moment later, eyes gone wide. One of her feeds is blinking rapidly, suffused with color. “That's– Senpai's very close to something very magical. There's so much power it's overwhelming the sensor into noise. And it's not... bad. She's not hurt. I think she has to be happy.” She looks over at Merlin again, and this time her heart is in her eyes.

Merlin straightens up rather than bear that look. It feels like it's about time to check on the coffin again. “Maybe it'll give her enough power to set up base camp,” he says lightly, unable to confirm or deny anything, and edges off toward where Alexander is slumbering.

“Merlin–!” Mash says, but he's already out of arm's reach, not that that would help her restrain him anyway.

Near the coffins, no one is going to eyeball Merlin _quite_ so pointedly. He bends over Alexander – still sleeping, still netted by Merlin's spells for sleep. Good. Merlin whispers steady dreams to him and leans over the coffin instead. The glow hasn't changed in quality, still something only faint and seeping around the edges. He'd have to ask someone else if they see it to know how real a thing it is.

Still incense, and the desert's heat. When Merlin presses his hand against the metal, accidentally a little into it, he finds a sense of yearning so strong it nearly takes him off his feet, a heart-punch of homesickness. He takes his hand back in a hurry, falling back a few steps. Is that what Romani feels, or the call of one part of the man to another?

Either way, Merlin isn't going to be doing that again any time soon.

Somewhere behind him, Da Vinci exclaims something triumphant. “First point of contact! Base camp procedures underway.” There's an assorted, ragged cheer, a little bit from each corner of the room, and then Da Vinci with mock seriousness puts in again. “Don't get too ahead of yourselves, everyone. We still have to secure it.”

One enterprising technician boos, and there's scattered laughter as – Merlin assumes – they all set to work with a renewed vigor. “It's still the best news we've had so far,” Mash says serenely, her clear voice carrying. “Senpai's safe and has resources.”

“Hmmm,” Da Vinci says, and nothing else, only that little bit of mischief which trails off into the business of work. Merlin listens, not bothering to move away from the coffin, as confirmations are tossed back and forth across the command room, as technicians synchronize data as much by word and sound as by the connections through the intranet.

Second point of contact. Third point of contact. Everything stalls, base camp existing but only half-secured in Chaldea's sensors. “It might be the time slippage,” the responsible tech says dubiously, hammering at a keyboard with probably more force than is actually needed to make the inputs. “I swear, I almost have a hook on it, it just keeps twisting at the last minute—”

“You're doing your best, as always,” Da Vinci interrupts, and by sheer force of her declaration if nothing else, Merlin suspects this is correct. “Please keep it up! We'll know soon for sure. It may be that this singularity takes more force than we're accustomed to, so we will simply have to try harder than usual. This is definitely our best chance to establish radio contact, as well; let's see if we can get a signal out.”

“On it,” another tech reports. “Running noise reduction algorithms as we speak.”

“Good!” Da Vinci seems pleased. Merlin regards the coffin a little further, debating with himself. There's really not much he can do here, other than stare at it. And, well, he can always come back and stare at it some more, if everyone else is getting too persnickety or too perceptive for his tastes.

“Senpai's calming down, I think,” Mash puts in. “At least, that's what it looks like... There's more interference with her signals than there was.”

There's a brief murmured interchange as the tech nearest Mash leans over to get a look at her screen, and they put their heads together, discussing life-signs and possible interpretations. Eventually the tech nods. “If nothing else, her life-signs have started to calm down,” she reports, and slides back to her own data. “And there's definitely Spirit Origins nearby.”

Da Vinci nods sharply. “At this point, chances are they're friends,” she says. It's her trademark brisk assessment, speedily done but no less confident in her results for it.

She might have said something more. At that point the audio channel crackles – the tech who had been working on the radio yelps, something that turns to a joyful whoop in a moment. Then: Ritsuka's voice. “Hey, Da Vinci-_chan_~”

Merlin's so proud. It's obnoxious sweetness right out of his own textbook. But as this is Ritsuka, the breath that pauses the control room is one of relief, not resignation.

“Ah, there you are,” Da Vinci says, barely missing a beat; but the smile she wears, Merlin sees, is soft around the edges, something that warms her beauty like a hearth in the midst of winter. “It's good to see you're okay. Not that we doubted you were, of course; we can see everything that's happening to you on this end.”

The technician who'd been overlooking the summons is startled into a laugh. “Almost everything,” the radio tech manages, very politely. No one really _wants_ to call Da Vinci out on the blatant fabrication, but it's hard to call the last several hours _doubtless_.

Then again, perhaps it was, in Da Vinci's mind. Merlin holds his peace.

“Well, your emotional and physical states, anyway,” Da Vinci amends comfortably. “Rest assured, we have been confirming your existence admirably. Oh, and now that we've made contact—” Da Vinci swivels, surveys the room. “Can we get a better reading on the time differential now?”

Two different hands are raised, one with a thumbsup, one with an OK circle. “Synchronizing now!”

“Excellent,” Da Vinci says, and turns back. “Ritsuka, what can you tell us about where you are right now?”

In the background, someone bemoans that they _still_ can't get the video feed up and running. Merlin drifts closer to Da Vinci, and the audio coming through her computer now, listening for— Anything. Everything.

“Well, for one thing, I'm in Jerusalem!” Ritsuka says. The smile in her voice is vastly audible. “And you'll never guess who's standing next to me right now.”

“_Ah_,” says Mash, very softly; Merlin doubts the microphone even picked it up.

Da Vinci's reaction is louder, anyway. “I'll bet I can,” Da Vinci says, well-earned smugness all over her face. She glances sideways, sees Merlin – there's a little fist-pump from her, the sort that speaks of impending triumph. “You haven't been waiting too long, right? Romani?”

Someone on the other end of the line, someone definitely not Ritsuka, makes a distinctive strangled sort of a sound, something next-door to spluttering. Merlin watches realization and thought spread among the command room staff– Mash with her hands over her mouth, the tech next to her turning and frowning with furrowed brow, a half-voiced question dying before it reaches the open air. “You're _kidding_,” someone says softly, into stillness that begins to shiver under a susurrus of disbelieving hope. _Is it really_ and _no way_ and _how did she know, he hasn't said anything_.

Da Vinci continues to look smug as a cat, as if she's lording her victory over those nearby. It's not like it's much of one, when she had insider knowledge and none of the others did, but Merlin knows where she's coming from. He's pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to resist either, if he was in her position. “And that's the sound of Romani being rendered inarticulate by surprise,” she goes on cheerfully, once the spluttering has subsided. Giggles are coming through the radio, unfettered and delighted and just a little staticky, Ritsuka all over. Da Vinci shoots a conspiratorial glance at Merlin, apparently before she remembers that she's not best pleased with him. “Is he doing the goldfish?”

“He is _definitely_ doing a goldfish.” It's not Ritsuka that answers, but a female voice Merlin doesn't recognize. Worse than that, he can't simply _look_ over there and see who it is, has to rely on impressions of quality. Pleasant; precise pronunciation with little accent; a little dry wonder around the edges; something not quite solid, fluxing, which Merlin will take to assume it's a phantom spirit. Or something else even stranger, maybe. “Gosh, and you looked so dignified, too.”

Fully half the command room breaks down in one form of giggles or another. “_Doctor Roman,_ dignified?” manages the tech overseeing summons, who has until now been very nobly maintaining her cool despite all the factors weighed against her.

Romani at least _tries_ to speak, gets out “I, um...” before he trails off into sheepish laughter. But it's him, even from that little piece, and Merlin can see people around the command room settling. A few of them have teared up; one man has had to walk away from his station for a few moments to sob unabashedly.

It's several long, precious moments before anyone has enough wherewithal to actually put words together; and through it all Da Vinci surveys her realm with an indulgently fond expression, the image of the parent amused by her children's antics. She rests her chin on her fist, and waits, and listens.

Ritsuka manages words first, of all of them. “He looks like he did right now,” she says, and seems to realize her wording is a little ambiguous, starts over. “That is— how he looked. You know. In his first life.”

“Well, yes, that makes sense.” Without straightening up, Da Vinci slants her eyes to Merlin, rather pointedly. He's not completely certain what point she's trying to make, which is probably for the best. Think what a travesty it would be if they knew each other so well that he could interpret her every eyeflick! She goes on without waiting for input, anyway, so Merlin’s not going to worry about it. “He cast off his reborn body in order to fight Goetia, after all. I look forward to seeing the goldfish while he's wearing his king's face.”

There's a remarkable silence that accompanies the pronouncement. “_Doctor?_” Ritsuka inquires into the silence, with what Merlin can tell is her best stern-voiced inquiry.

Romani clears his throat. “Ah, sorry, Ritsuka,” he says, giving the command room their first proper hearing of him. His voice is almost as it was. The accent is a little different, the quality not quite as Doctor Roman's was; it sounds like the same person, just perhaps one who has spent an additional several years in Israel instead of Chaldea. “I should've explained. I'm probably not leaving here.”

“_Why not_?” Ritsuka demands, and there's a quietly distressed murmur around the edges of the command room to match. They're trying to keep the crosstalk and chatter to a minimum when the line is active, but there's only so much that can be done about it. Everyone here worked closely and well with Doctor Roman, after all. Merlin might even go so far as to say he was well-loved by the staff of Chaldea.

“I'm not a Heroic Spirit.” Romani's tone is strained-light as he goes on. Merlin pays sharp attention, calculating: what the King of Mages knows about his existence will be valuable, if he has to tweak something on the run. “I have no Spirit Origin to read, nothing to summon. I'm human.”

Very carefully, Da Vinci cuts the audio feed from their side, making sure Ritsuka and Romani's conversation is still audible, but that nothing from Chaldea will get to them for a few moments; and she beckons to Merlin, the sweep of her hand firm and insistent. Merlin bends over obligingly. This isn't about their disagreement, after all. It's about their ultimate goal, and for that much can be put aside. “Between the two of us,” she says to Merlin, low and intent, “I'd estimate our odds of successful retrieval are at least 90%, based on the strategy you've outlined, the preparations you've put in, and the code I've assembled to glitch the leyshift. There's no reason it _shouldn't_ work, since we're this far past impossible to begin with.”

Merlin nods agreement, but— “There's always a margin of error,” he says, equally soft. “This isn't precisely something we can trial. There will be one chance.”

“I began here and I'll end here,” Romani is saying in the background. “In Jerusalem.”

Da Vinci's face does something terrible for maybe half a second. Politely Merlin pretends he didn't see it. “I wonder,” she says. “Is it enough to give him hope?”

Merlin hesitates, finally shakes his head to the tune of Ritsuka avowing faith in Da Vinci. “He'll step up because they need him to,” he says. “It may be cruel, but— right now, he's certain, you know? This is better a fait accompli.”

She eyes Merlin sidelong, listening to the conversation in Jerusalem at the same time. “I was beginning to think the same thing,” she admits then. “I suppose you'd know him just as well, by this point of things. Ah, it's a pity. I do so like being the deliverer of glad tidings! But it'll be more fun as a surprise later, don't you think?”

As an argument, it's rather a short and disappointing one. They were in agreement to begin with, Merlin guesses. He steps back, and Da Vinci turns the audio receiver back on just in time to intercede. “Just for that,” she says, “I'm going to say 'watch me,' Romani Archaman. You put a challenge in front of a genius, you need to take the consequences.”

Merlin kind of admires the art in it. She'd _have_ to respond that way, to Romani disparaging her inventiveness, but at the same time it says nothing of the fact they have a concrete plan and a Spirit Origin humming in a coffin, just waiting to be reunited.

“...Anyway,” Romani says, with a little bit of forced cheer. “The situation here is straightforward enough!” He goes on, into details of the Grail – of course there's a Grail – and what's been happening with the Singularity. Merlin listens to his conversation with Da Vinci with half an ear, keeping his own mouth firmly shut. He's not going to let Romani know he's here; it'd just raise more questions, and they need to focus on resolving the Singularity.

Merlin paces around the command room some more instead. The staff are dedicated to their work, but where they can spare the attention, they talk quietly among themselves, wondering. Some outlooks are hopeful, delighted; some are dismayed by what Romani's had to say about _ending in Jerusalem._

This, too, Merlin lets slide, doesn’t bother correcting the notion. With so few resources to offer from here, focus is vital, and hope… ah, the utility of hope as focus or distraction is still an ongoing debate. And Romani can be just as saved whether he knows it or not.

Merlin wanders back to hunker down next to the coffin. He's learned his lesson this time, doesn't touch it at all, but he tilts his head and listens, and wonders what he's overlooked, if anything. The only thing, he decides, that could possibly help more than all the work put in already, is a sample of genetic material, something on this side to match to what's in Jerusalem, but right now Merlin doesn't really have a way to get that.

Unless, the braid...?

No, that had been a dream. No matter how much form it maintained removed from the dream, it was still dreamstuff and stardust, waveforms and memories. Still, of all the pieces Merlin assembled, he estimates that one's the most useful.

If they did send anyone else to join Ritsuka, Merlin might be able to whip up something to ridealong the leyshift connection, but that's a pretty big if, with the resources the leyshift needs to get to something this difficult to reach. It would probably increase their odds, though. Blood is always a powerful magic... well, he'll table the idea for later, if the opportunity arises. 

For the moment, he's not getting any further. Merlin straightens up and paces away again, around the edges, listening to the conversation over the radio, himself never able quite to sit still. Romani and Da Vinci and Ritsuka are talking strategy – there are some female voices in the background chipping in, Merlin hears both geographical and technical help. _Asmodeus_ comes up. That's one Merlin knows of, in point of fact, mostly because of the affiliation with lust. He's pretty sure there's no relation.

Mash, over by her console, is very quiet, even though Merlin had kind of expected she'd be over the moon about Doctor Roman, and chiming in to help Ritsuka as per usual. Maybe it's just a case of ceding to Da Vinci's genius, but Merlin isn't completely convinced.

...It's not like he's worried, either, he just wants to make sure Mash doesn't blow it when he and Da Vinci have already decided that it's going to be for the best not to tell Romani anything yet.

He hunkers down next to her, observing her observing. “You're quiet about all this,” Merlin says after a few moments' deliberation on what shows a low enough level of emotional investment. He keeps it to an undertone in vague respect of her own softness, and so the whole thing won't be accidentally picked up by the radio. This is definitely not a conversation for Romani's ears, not right now.

“Mm.” Mash’s agreement is only the barest of whispers, and she nods gravely. She's still watching Ritsuka's data, even though they have very clear confirmation in a number of other ways right now. If something dire were to happen, they'd hear it as it happened. Mash can relax a little: but she won't. 

Merlin can both appreciate why and be a little intimidated by her work ethic at the same time.

“...Well,” he says, when she doesn't venture anything else immediately. “Okay.” There's a brief and spirited internal argument with himself about whether or not he wants to pry further into this; whether he really _wants_ to get involved in a conversation that will doubtless be at least some variety of emotional. “I'll... leave you to that, then.”

At that Mash does shake her head, the fine fringe of her hair shading first one eye, then the other. “Please wait,” she says, still low and quiet.

Galahad's hair had done the same thing. The color is more of Mash herself; but always there are shades of the heart she carries. It's quite frankly unfair, Merlin thinks uncharitably, that she should have the power to nag at such old parts of him without even knowing she's doing it. Not that it would necessarily be better if she were manipulating him on purpose, but at least then Merlin would be able to justify being angry with her.

He waits, halfway through a motion to escape. It occurs to him a few moments into this that it'd be more comfortable if he picked either crouching or standing, but he's committed now. This is where he is.

“...I'm worried,” Mash says eventually. She chances a quick side-glance to see how invested Da Vinci is; there's spirited conversation going on over the radio, of which Da Vinci is a large part. “Doctor Roman seems... really certain that he's not...”

“He doesn't know a few important things,” Merlin says. “I know he's the King of Mages and all, but even if he invented summoning, we've made a few improvements in the past few thousand years, you know. I talked to Da Vinci, though, and we're not telling him. Not... yet.”

He's expecting to have to explain it, honestly, but at this Mash just nods. “Yes,” she says, and, “It might not be fair of me, but I think I would have chosen the same thing. When it was me...” She trails off, brows knit for a few moments as she picks through whatever it is she wants to say. “It was kind of freeing. Knowing I didn't have very long left. It made everything else seem so small...”

Merlin remembers this well; or, at least, he remembers the outcomes of it. Mash, who had gone on ahead anyway, knowing how little was left to her and choosing, in the face of that certainty, to do everything that remained to her.

“I think Doctor Roman might be the same,” Mash says at length. “That is, he sounds like he'd come to terms with it. Or, like he was trying to be okay with it, maybe. I thought about what I would have done, at the Temple of Time, if someone had said they _might_ be able to extend my life. I think... I wouldn't have been able to move forward as well.”

They both know Goetia is not included on the list of people such an offer would have been considered from. Merlin nods. “Da Vinci and I thought pretty much the same thing,” he says. “Things are dangerous enough over there. And if you think so, too, then we _definitely_ did the right thing.”

Mash blushes very slightly, high and pink. “It's not something that you can un-say,” she says. “And I want... I want to see his face, when he comes home, and realizes he's safe.”

“The goldfish,” Merlin says knowingly.

She traps a giggle behind her hand before it can get out, but it's gone in a flash, and she sobers quickly. “I think you were right,” she says then. “Hope can be a dangerous thing. But I think someone has to have it. Even though I'm worried about him, so much it's hard to focus, I trust you, too. You and Da Vinci have been working hard to save him, haven't you?”

Merlin is too busy twitching over having been reminded she trusts him basically without question to answer immediately; mustering the words takes longer than anything typically glib. “Of course we have,” he says. “Da Vinci would never accept less than the best, after all, and both of us are on the job.”

Mash nods, more certainly this time. “Everyone else, too,” she says. “They don't know what you've been doing, but even so... knowing that right now, he's alive out there, has changed everyone. You see it, don't you?”

Now that she points it out, he does see what she means on another survey. The raw emotion of recognizing Romani hasn't so much gone away as been directed. The command room staff work more determinedly than ever, even though a few of them are doing it through lingering tears or an ongoing fit of quiet giggles. The air itself breathes differently, even to Merlin, who isn't really _there_.

“...yeah,” he agrees. “So what you're saying is, you'd rather have the worry _and_ the hope, huh?”

“Yes.” She's fierce about it, almost forgetting her undertone. “Because I'm worried, because I'm afraid I won't ever see him again after coming so close, it's hard to carry on. But because I believe in you, and because of the hope you've given me, I can keep doing what I need to. I can work for that even though I'm worried, because that's more important. See?”

Merlin isn't convinced he sees, but he nods knowingly anyway, because the alternative is that she keeps telling him about trust and belief, and quite honestly, each repetition alarms Merlin a little more. The more she says it, the more Merlin has to hear it in her painful sincerity, and the more she's going to believe it, too. How does he get out of this one?

In the end he just doesn't answer her, opting to listen to the hum and beep of machinery and sensors, and the ongoing conversation Da Vinci is having with the radio and the people on the other side of it. Mash doesn't press him yet, either. Probably, Merlin thinks with some resignation, she thinks she's learned something more about him, like his inability to really remember for himself exactly how hope works, in the proper forward-looking sense.

She's probably not wrong, either, which is the worst part. He consoles himself by remembering that he has plans to disappear back to the Tower and then a million other dreams after all's said and done. He might linger a bit to placate Da Vinci, but in the end, it really won't matter, if he's not coming back here very often – or indeed at all – for her to judge or disapprove of or otherwise annoy. No one here can summon him by force, it'll be fine.

Merlin tilts his head back and closes his eyes a little, listening more attentively to the radio conversation. They're plotting how to infiltrate deeper into Jerusalem, into enemy territory, it sounds like. Ritsuka isn't best pleased by it, since it's going to involve parachuting. It's also necessarily going to mean she's out of radio contact – at least for Chaldea directly, although Merlin suspects if they're creative enough about where Romani stands in his part of Jerusalem, they'll be able to hear him hearing her. Still, Mash is about to be back to hyper-attentive duty, which also gives Merlin a great excuse to slip away some more.

That's what he does in Chaldea: talks to people until it gets uncomfortable, and then slips away while they're not looking. He's a model of great human interaction and can definitely tell why Ritsuka would want him around.

“If you don't want to talk about something, you can say that,” Mash says to him. She's still quiet, and it takes Merlin a few moments to recognize that she was actually talking to him.

When he does process it, he doesn't even bother lifting his head again to look at her directly. He just huffs quietly, the most distant echo of a laugh he can possibly muster. “I really can't,” he tells her in turn. “I think I might actually be physically incapable of that! Half-incubus, you know. Anyway, it's not that I don't want to talk about it, I just don't really see what you're getting at, but it's not something that'd be useful to argue about now, you know?”

Mash sighs at him softly, which somehow makes Merlin feel like he's misstepped even more than anything else she might have done could. “What does being half-incubus have to do with it?” she wants to know.

“Oh,” Merlin says, “you know.”

Her expression suggests that she does not, in fact, know, and is beginning to further suspect Merlin of making things up.

“It's because I don't care about people the same way humans do,” he tells her then, digging his own pit of troubles for later. “So talking to people can be awkward, sometimes, since some of the fundamental underlying assumptions are different. And as a result of _that_, I learned different ways to talk about things that minimize upsetting people, you know? Most of the time, it really is easier to just turn something to the side instead of stop it cold. It's that way with magic and physics and— everything, really.”

“An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force,” Mash says, stilted, half-reciting. Then she shakes her head. “I mean— yes, I understand the principle. But... um. Merlin, you annoy people all the time.”

“Well, I don't always _mean_ to,” he says, with as much innocence as he is capable of. It's not a lot, but he really is trying.

To his horror, it doesn't look like she believes him. “No, that's not what I meant,” she says, and shakes her head again. This time there's that little crease between her brows again, the thinking frown. “That is... well. A psychopath is someone who lacks empathy, right?”

“...right,” Merlin agrees, with her so far and not sure where she's going with this at all, except that it's probably somewhere he's not going to enjoy.

“But those kinds of people can learn to fake it by observation.” Mash drags a finger lightly across her keyboard, not enough to press any keys, just make a soft rippling shudder of a sound. “Which is what you do, right? ...um, not that I'm calling you a psychopath.” She colors under the curtain of her hair.

Merlin shrugs. “It's close enough,” he says easily, laying in the armor. “I'm capable of emotions, it's just a lot more distant. I care about stories more easily than I care about people, and I don't really have friends.” His lies are never quite perfect, just as the stories about him all disagree to some extent or another; but by the same token, it means there's almost always room to look innocent and say that's not what he meant.

Mash bites her lip for a moment. “And you're very old.”

“About fifteen hundred, ish,” Merlin agrees. “I don't know the exact number. And there's an argument to be made for whether or not I'm actually aging, where I am...” Ah, he might begin to see what she's getting at. Thoughtfully Merlin glances around for a good excuse for an exit.

It's not fast enough. “It's kind of strange,” Mash says carefully, “that you've had that much practice and you can still upset people so often without meaning to. Isn't it?” 

She's still not _accusing_ him of anything. Just laying out facts. Merlin rolls his shoulders as if to escape some phantom itch and makes a face. “Maybe I'm just not very good at it,” he says. “Some people just aren't born very good liars, even when they practice a lot.” It's harder, anyway, to lie directly. That's just human nature. The easiest way to do it is to redirect and tell half-truths, to use the truth as its own shield instead of inventing something completely new.

“That's possible,” Mash agrees. “But you said maybe. Is that not it?”

Definitely Merlin wants the exit. This is why he doesn't spend time around people. Well, this and the Tower, and his long-term vacation there. But if he _was _free to wander wherever he liked at all times, this would definitely be why he didn't.

“I haven't spent a whole lot of time on psychoanalyzing myself,” he says, as cheerfully as possible. “There's a lot of options. Anyway, I'm going to go check on the coffin, and we should probably both be paying attention to the radio, right? Ritsuka or Doctor Roman might need something.”

He sees Mash's eyes narrow like she _knows_ he is using an excuse to get away, but he's already making his escape. The problem is that then Merlin has to go back and stare at Klein Coffin Number Four with its desert-heat, incense-sweet scent, and the powerful yearning he knows is humming beneath its surface, and sit with the fact that he really does want this to be successful, even if it _did_ start because of boredom. And there's nothing more he can really do with the coffin, at this point, except maybe work out a way to get it a current genetic sample for maximum program success odds.

There's not a lot he can do here at all. He's just here to wait, and watch. As he ever is.


	4. the tune without the words

Instead of linger by the coffin, Merlin does another circuit of the command room, and another. Again, and again. Da Vinci and Romani are talking. He hasn't heard Ritsuka's voice in a little while, wonders vaguely if she's wandered off for human needs or for that mission into the depth of Jerusalem they were talking about. He stops to check on the sleeping Servants. And Hassan of the Hundred Personas, who has succumbed to dozing but slits her eyes open with a fierce, burning sort of determination as soon as Merlin comes within about three feet of her.

He gives her a careful berth while moving around the others. Nursery Rhyme feels like the best bet – Merlin touches her carefully, dream fingers gentle around the sensors Da Vinci has put in place. He tries to reach into her dreams and it feels like reaching into a blast chiller, or the void of space. Merlin jerks away with his fingertips cold-singed, and frowns sulkily at the book-child. This singularity is just designed to vex him.

While he's considering _that_, however, there's movement toward the door of the command room, and Merlin jerks his head up, ready to vanish if he catches so much as a _whiff_ of blue and white and gold; but it's not Artoria this time. Still someone Merlin kind of wishes wasn't here, though. He gets to his feet and heads over to cut David off at the pass.

“Mage of Flowers.” David greets Merlin with calm equanimity, doesn't look too perturbed by the fact that Merlin is translucent and pink. Maybe people are starting to expect it. Clearly, Merlin needs to turn up his general amount of shenanigans. He begins this venture by greeting David with a lazy, two-fingered wave instead of the respect due a king of Israel.

This, too, David takes in stride. All he really bothers to do in return is look past Merlin at the command room and then give him a thoughtful, questioning look. It's the sort of look given to court mages and advisors, as Merlin well knows. The one that says, I want to know what you think, and your advice has merit.

It's a little more kingly than Merlin likes directed at him, especially given this is still theoretically only the _future_ king of Israel, the shepherd-youth rather than the sovereign, but then again the last time Merlin saw David, they were speaking very, very personally. Distance might be a shielding technique. Or an 'ugh, it's this guy again' technique. There are options.

Obstinate in his obnoxiousness, Merlin shoves his hands into his pockets and slouches like his life depends on it, ignoring the meaningful look.

“I heard,” David says, and stops again, this time tilting his head as if listening, and listening hard. Somewhere behind him, Merlin hears Romani's voice, and he sees David hearing it, too; sees a softening about the set of his jaw, the corners of his eyes. “...I heard that this Singularity was Jerusalem. And I wondered.”

“Yes, it's him; no, I haven't done anything yet; they have things more or less in hand.” Merlin pauses there, mentally ticking off the questions he thinks David might be planning to ask; after a moment he adds one more pre-emptive answer. “No, she can't summon you.”

David's expression jerks hard north into _king_, alien on the youth of his face but nevertheless something Merlin recognizes from dreams. Apparently Merlin hit a good mark. “Apart from my – from Solomon – there isn't anyone better to guide,” David points out. It's devoid of ego. Just a fact: Jerusalem was, or is, or will be his city. He casts another glance behind and through Merlin, around the command room, and frowns very slightly. “What's happened? This is very nearly all of the Asāsiyyūn summoned to Chaldea.”

“It sure is,” Merlin agrees, spotting the offense impending and breezing right by it in the hopes that will help. “This Singularity– it doesn't like people it knows. Anyone remembered, anyone recognized, gets evicted or worse. The Hassan are getting half a pass, as far as I can tell, because the entire point of them is to be the faceless Old Man of the Mountain. You? There's no way Ritsuka will be able to bring you in. You're nearly the most known quantity you can get, for Jerusalem.”

David moves anyway, as if to stride into the room regardless of anything Merlin is saying. Merlin moves to body-block him, and even though he's translucent it works – on some sort of instinct, David pulls up before he walks through Merlin, his look distinctly unhappy. “Surely,” he says, “it would still be possible to offer advice on the city from this end of the radio.”

In principle, there's nothing wrong with it. But Merlin wonders: is this because of Jerusalem, or is it because of Solomon? He still can't make up his mind how much David really _cares_ for his son. —not like Merlin is in a great position to identify things like that himself properly. “Hasn't the city changed since your time?” he asks lightly, instead of cutting to the honest truth of why he doesn't want David involved. “There's no way it's not the Jerusalem that Solomon ruled.”

“Expanded, yes,” David admits. His eyes are not for Merlin; he is watching Da Vinci, watching her speak to Romani, and there is something about his bearing that speaks of yearning. Still, Merlin can't discern for _what_, only that David wants to be over there, instead of here, with a pull that comes from the unconscious. “I'm told he built much, far and wide. But if it is the Jerusalem of Solomon, then my Jerusalem will be within it, at the very least.” It takes him some very clear effort to pull his attention back to Merlin instead of past him, through him. 

He’s got maybe eighty percent of a point. It’s definitely closer to David’s Jerusalem than the mess of the sixth Singularity had been. 

Merlin had had a hard time watching that one; but he had done Bedivere the dignity of bearing witness. 

Now he turns his mind away from that time to focus on David, and David tilts his head hopefully, the vestiges of the disapproving king gone for the moment. The earnest shepherd is a little easier to converse with, mercifully. “What can it hurt?” David asks, genuinely wondering. His gaze keeps darting past Merlin, though, and he’s taken a step before he stops himself again.

“We’re trying not to distract him,” Merlin admits with a sigh. “Da Vinci hasn’t mentioned I’m here, or that we have any kind of... plan. Your relationship with Romani is complicated enough that it could be dangerous to bring up while there are so few resources available to Ritsuka, and so much riding on Solomon’s capability to maintain his Territory. Do you understand?”

“...perhaps,” David says slowly. “It’s odd. I know Doctor Roman, of course. He does well under high pressure, but up to that point he’s distractible, right? If it were him, I’d understand. But when I think about Solomon...” His gaze turns reflective, inward and meditative. “As I mentioned. It’s more distant. But in my memories of him, he always did the correct thing at the correct time, no matter the circumstances surrounding. It’s hard to imagine him being shaken by anything.”

Merlin considers this — reviews the conversation between Romani and Da Vinci which he’s been half-listening to, and the principles of the Singularity. “I don’t think he’s clairvoyant right now,” Merlin says bluntly then.

David looks up sharply at that, and the initial rush of it just turns to bemusement. “Is he not who he was?”

Helpfully, Merlin shrugs. “The Singularity is weird,” he clarifies, in case David hadn’t gotten that impression yet. “He’s somewhere between, I think. Anyway, you can stick around unless Da Vinci kicks you out. It’d be nice if you stayed quiet, though, and if you do have to talk about things, I’d appreciate it if you kept anything about me or the dream we shared out of it.”

David thinks about this. Merlin wonders if he’s done the mental translation from ‘I’d appreciate it if’ to ‘I’ll make your life deeply uncomfortable in illusory ways if you don’t’. He really doesn’t think of himself as someone prone to revenge past the extremely petty and the Mordred-shaped and both, but this is a special exception. 

“...All right,” David says finally. “If those are your conditions. I would rather be here, and quiet, than away.” 

Merlin doesn’t like how grateful David looks. He nods, then, and backs away before David can get the bright idea to _actually_ walk through him. 

On quiet, sure feet David moves into the command room proper. Merlin supervises from a distance as David goes to linger near Da Vinci. She turns to look at David when he’s close enough, brow furrowed faintly, and David responds to this with a finger to his lips. Quite predictably, Da Vinci’s next step is to catch Merlin’s gaze and make a quizzical face at him, along with a hand turned over and arm swept open, questioning.

Merlin nods to her, offers a thumbs-up, as if to say, _yeah, he’s cool_. Da Vinci eyes David, then shrugs at Merlin and returns to the conversation she was having with Romani.

It puts Merlin back into the game of waiting. He almost wishes he’d managed to start a proper argument with David. Almost sulkily Merlin paces yet another circuit of the command room, and finally hops up to perch on top of the first bank of coffins, where Ritsuka’s and Romani’s both have their own sort of life humming faintly. Some tinkering with height is required to avoid sinking into any coffins, again. Eventually Merlin has an almost downright aerial vantage, and can survey the command room without submitting himself to the risks of people walking through him or _talking_ to him.

So: he watches. That sort of ground is more easily familiar than being in among the people, anyway. Merlin tucks a knee up and dangles his other foot, kicking idly as people shift around the command room. One of the techs eventually spells Mash so she can go hover near Da Vinci, speaking to Doctor Roman. Merlin hears enough of the conversation to know there are tears, which makes him reluctant to listen any closer. Whatever they’re trying to tell him, he really is allergic to emotions.

...anyway, he doesn’t really want to linger in contemplation of the architect of Mash’s survival. He’s proud of Cath Palug, naturally. He must have loved Mash with every piece of his deceptively fluffy body to do as he did; in the end, he did as Merlin had hoped, when he kicked his familiar out of Avalon. 

There’s a joke in there _somewhere_ about Beauty and the Beast, but Merlin’s too lazy to make it, even to himself. In the space of his own mind he lifts a glass to Cath Palug, Beast of Gaia, and makes a mental note to keep an eye out for Fou. He hasn’t been kicked in the face or bitten _once_ yet this visit, and he’s sure the little beastie is only biding his time.

Then again, Merlin’s in dream-projection form. Maybe Fou hasn’t sensed him. 

Merlin’s side-eying Mash and Da Vinci, looking for the safe point to hop down again — it’ll be whenever they’ve stopped being deeply emotional. It’s not that Merlin doesn’t get where the emotion’s coming from; he just wants absolutely no part of it. His own are complicated enough. 

A rumbling upset by static interrupts all of his plans to wait, scatters alarm throughout the command room. It sounds like the shifting stone and heavy rolling of an earthquake, magnified broadly, like it’s not entirely a physical thing, like there’s something trembling the world itself; and with it comes a voice, low and resonant, one to which a deeper part of Merlin pays close attention, as if to say _I know you_. 

“_I’m coming for you, unforgotten king of Israel_.”

The words are clear enough, even disrupted by static and rumbling. These, too, are more than sound. Merlin hops down in a smooth rush of gravity and place, immediately makes his way over. Mash has scrambled for her station again, and it’s ceded gracefully in the dance of work exchanged that Merlin’s already seen time and time again between Chaldea’s skeleton crew. “We should have seen something coming,” she murmurs, frowning at her sensors, and lifts her voice to carry and add, “Senpai’s still okay. Her heart rate’s up, so she’s running, probably—”

“Nursery Rhyme and Hassan are summoned,” one of the techs puts in. Merlin’s briefly distracted by that — it implies they were _un_summoned at some point, and they haven’t seen anyone rouse except for Hundred Personas’ brief and crotchety interruptions to insist that she is very awake. But— ah, of course. The failed summon sapped Alexander’s energy so far down he passed out easily. The Hassans and Nursery Rhyme may not have been harmed by the transfer, but they’ve still been exerting effort, and they’re only half there. They’ve probably just been in and out of sleep. 

There’s one mystery solved which doesn’t really matter right now. Merlin tucks it away as a note to ask Da Vinci if her sensors can register sleep cycles— but later, when the crisis is passed. David is nearer now, looking genuinely concerned.

The voice of the thing on the other end keeps humming through, making threats. Merlin swears he feels it in his bones, though his bones are a world away. Static rouses and fizzes, but underlays the threats against the king of Israel, rather than obscuring the words. A few of the consoles develop staticky bars across the display, making more than one tech yelp and employ percussive maintenance. Da Vinci hisses something unhappy about how fast this has all gone pear-shaped; her face is tight, focused.

Merlin watches. He can’t do much else. That particular problem hasn’t gotten much more endearing to him.

“_I’ll spare you witnessing the fall of your people_,” comes through, and David’s face goes tight. 

“No king of Israel would take that offer,” the shepherd says softly, into the static and the low tension of uncertainty and fear which begins to pervade the command room. 

Romani seems to agree, if the tone of voice in which he answers is any clue; but when he speaks it’s in a language Merlin doesn’t know. “Hebrew?” someone suggests in the background.

David shakes his head. “As it was in our time— ah. ‘O my Master, hear me beseech thee’...”

More than one of them were expecting a running translation, judging by the expectant looks David gets; but instead he trails off there, looking suddenly concerned. And, Merlin notes, Solomon’s voice grows clearer as he goes, as the words roll from him with a certain reverent force. It isn’t that the static is clearing up: it’s just that the voice of the king is _more_ than the interference trying to block it out. 

“...Ah,” David says finally, something catching his ear, and his eyes go wide. “Close every connection to Jerusalem, Lady Da Vinci. Immediately—”

Romani’s voice is nearly drowning out David’s, despite that the signal is still as bad as it’s ever been. Da Vinci frowns at David. “We can’t shut down everything,” she says, fast and urgent. “If we completely lose contact, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to find them again. Why?”

“The Authority he’s calling on doesn’t care that we’re only connected by technology,” David says, with a similar urgency. He reaches up and pulls his staff down out of the air, and the bell on it jingles merrily. In his deft hands it comes apart, becomes a u-shape instead of a long rod. David draws his fingers across it, and harp-strings spring into being, fine and golden. “Think of the Ark of the Covenant—”

Here is where Da Vinci’s eyes go wide. Merlin knows now what the sting that accompanies Romani’s words is, like the sun on burned shoulders. “Everything except the data from Ritsuka,” she says, reaching for her keyboard and typing at high speed. “Base camp, disconnect—”

Techs chime in from across the command room, confirming safe shutdown of their various responsibilities. David hums, plucking a melody on the strings of his harp, and when he has found his note he begins to sing, high and sweet in the same ancient Hebrew. Merlin tugs at his own magic, begins to wrap his own protections around the people here; but his best protection is in illusion, in making someone simply appear somewhere else entirely, and even he doesn’t think he can misdirect _this_ Authority. 

He must needs try. 

“I think that’s everything,” Da Vinci says, some several seconds later. She’s almost inaudible over the rising insistence of Romani’s voice. “Mash, don’t feel shy about closing your eyes or hiding under the console if you need to.”

“—wait, the FATE system,” someone says distantly. “If we shut it down, RItsuka will lose Nursery Rhyme and Hassan, but—”

Da Vinci says something, whirling urgent, and it goes completely unheard as the voice from Jerusalem bells through Chaldea:

** _Y H W H_ **

And there is light, encompassing, piercing and swallowing all at once. It leaks through the cracks around consoles, especially vibrant by Mash — she has her arm braced as though to plant the shield of the Round Table before her, no matter that it has not been in her hand for months. The tech who had asked about the summoning program bangs her elbow off the metal desk in her rush to tuck herself under something solid, as her computer sparks and fizzes ominously with the force of power through it. On a hunch Merlin glances over toward the array of the coffins, and finds that Coffins 1 and 4 are both glowing through the seams. 

It’s promising for the success of their venture, but the radiance scorches the edge of Alexander’s hair and leaves black marks on the floor.

And all through the rush of it, there is David’s song— it sounds more entreaty and less hymn now. Even Merlin it touches, and it feels as though the song has some physical substance, wraps around him to blunt the impact of the seeking light. His lungs struggle to draw breath, and his body feels alarmingly weightless for the span of a few seconds. 

Then he is settled again, a facsimile of a form still shimmering with the last ringing notes. Merlin catches his breath as the presence drains out of the room, leaving it feeling smaller and duller. Mash is fixed where she is, breathing hard; David shakes his fingers out, wincing as he blows on the reddened tips, and there is still a low hum in his throat. 

Da Vinci’s hair is rumpled, and when she starts to speak she has to clear her throat and try again. “All right, people, let’s get systems back up and running, and see what our losses are and what we can fudge until there’s time for safe repair. I’m seeing no response from the FATE system; can anyone confirm?”

There’s a distant groan, accompanied by a hissing spark. “Working on it,” someone calls back. “I’m showing that Ritsuka managed to summon Archer, Emiya, in full before systems were overloaded, but the summon didn’t last more than two minutes. Can’t tell if our blowout dropped him, or if something happened on that end—”

Da Vinci crooks a finger at Merlin. “Take a look through surveillance and see if you can find Emiya anywhere,” she says. “Everyone else, let’s prioritize radio and base camp contacts.”

“I believe I will sit down for a few minutes,” David says, polite and weary, and moves to do just that; but as he moves by the Hassan, Hundred Personas leaps to her feet, wild-eyed and looking very much _awake_. David doesn’t _yelp_, but he does dart away to give her a much wider clearance, goes to find somewhere _else_ in the command room to sit down.

“_Where did they go_,” Hundred Personas snarls, and, “—wait. Where am I?”

Merlin reassigns himself to deal with the Hassans, since all of the techs are busy, and rightly so. He scoots over that way, waves to catch Hundred Personas’ attention. “Chaldea, command room,” he says brightly. “It sounds like you’re back! Do you remember Jerusalem?”

Hundred Personas settles quickly, at least, taking in the room with quick flicks of her eyes and the practiced assessing skills of someone well used to getting their bearings after a sudden change. Grudgingly, she puts her knives away. “...a little,” she says, and tilts her head sideways, palm against her temple for several moments. “The way Master summoned us is _weird_, I don’t want to do that again. I’ve got enough going on up here without those two.” 

“How’d she summon you?” Merlin wants to know, since they’ve conjectured but not really confirmed.

Hundred Personas makes a face that speaks of deep disdain and a desire to be wearing a mask. “All in one,” she says. “Master called for _Hassan_, and she got him— us. There has been an Old Man in the mountains for centuries, after all... Ugh.” But despite the unhappy noises she’s making about having shared headspace with her fellow Hassan, Hundred Personas is already turning to go and see if Cursed Arm and Serenity have roused yet. Merlin goes with her, not exactly helping but leaning over her shoulder to see how the others are. 

“That’s weird,” says the tech who’s been largely responsible for eyeballing the summon system. “It looked like we had the First Hassan for a moment.”

“_Was_ the First with you in the amalgam?” Merlin asks, curious. It’s nice to keep track of the First when possible, since it’s generally pretty _impossible_ to do. He comes and goes as he pleases, that one, always and never present. Such is the spectre of Death. 

Hundred Personas lifts her shoulders in a quick shrug, and leans over to poke Cursed Arm in the ear. He doesn’t immediately respond, so she does it again. And again. “Maybe,” she says. “It’s hard to say. When he’s _an_ Old Man of the Mountain, that’s what he is. If Master was just calling for that, maybe. But the First of us all, the one who can end anything?” 

Cursed Arm swats at her poking hand and doesn’t rouse. Hundred Personas rolls her eyes and starts prodding him in the cheek instead, just under the line of his mask. “Get up, layabout. Anyway, Grand Caster, it’s hard to say; but if he was summoned in any other aspect than _Hassan_, he’d be hard to miss.”

A little further off, in the corner into which she was safely tucked, Serenity blinks hazy eyes open and makes a confused noise, probably about the tarp she’s wrapped in. 

“Thanks,” Merlin says, not actually sure if he’s gained anything out of all this. “Need any help?” 

“Sure don’t,” Hundred Personas says, and apparently gives up attempting to wake Cursed Arm. Instead she crouches and hauls him over her shoulder, muttering something about laziness and napping. “I’m going to take this one down to the cafeteria and pour him into some coffee. If you need us...”

“I’ll let the crew know if they’re looking for you,” Merlin says cheerfully, and watches as Serenity trails after, bleary-eyed and still dragging a tarp. For the largest part, everyone else in the room is busy — re-initializing systems, confirming damage or lack thereof. No injuries. David has found a corner to sit down in, Merlin presumes, and subsequently takes a few moments to look around for him. 

Somehow, Merlin’s wholly unsurprised to find him by the coffins, leaning against the third one in with one knee drawn up to his chest and his harp cradled in the crook of his elbow. His head is turned toward coffin 4. 

Merlin’s just going to let him be for the moment. He starts toward the unused consoles, intent on resuming what Da Vinci had actually told him to do in the first place, and halfway there a shriek of static and feedback splits the room. Several people yelp; two of them swear loudly. “And we’re back!” Da Vinci says, jubilant. “Now just waiting for them to pick up. Chaldea to Jerusalem, come in Jerusalem...”

Consciously Merlin turns his attention away from how distraught Mash is, how her relief puts her near tears when there’s an answer from the other side. Human emotion is important and necessary, and core to every story, but he doesn’t have time or inclination to get distracted by it right now. 

The computer boots up when he pokes it enough times with sufficient intent, and he cheats further by shoving his whole hand inside the black box of the computer and thinking surveillance thoughts at it. He catches the closest technician eyeballing jealous daggers in his direction, to which Merlin shrugs and smiles, as if to say he really can’t help it. Emiya, Emiya... if he were the Nameless Archer, where would he be?

Video feeds flicker pink static as Merlin paws through them. Cafeteria — a mess, but at least half because someone has started a tussle over pudding cups. No Emiya there. Hallway — stores — living quarters — infirmary. _There_ he is, singed and flat out on a bed, Florence and Paracelsus having a dialogue nearby with increasing gesticulation on the Nightingale’s part. In the far corner of the room, only just visible at the outskirts, Artoria sits cross-legged and watches.

Merlin definitely does not want to go down and check on them, or to make use of the intercom. He assesses what he can from their positions and attitudes instead — Emiya isn’t visibly wounded apart from the scorch marks across his crimson jacket and the ash coloring his hair dark. Florence is in disagreement with Paracelsus, but nothing has come to blows yet, which Merlin’s sure it would have if Florence judged there to be an imminent obstacle to the treatment of wounds. And Artoria is calm — calm enough, anyway. It’s a supervisory sort of worry, a peace that comes from knowing this is all she can do for the moment, but that all will be well.

...he still can read her bearing that well, huh. Merlin passes an insubstantial hand fruitlessly in front of his eyes, sighs, and steps away from the monitor in favor of going to lurk and listen to the conversation.

They’re speaking of Bathsheba. Ah, that would be Solomon’s mother, wouldn’t it? How strange that must be, after this long. The corollary of Bathsheba comes more slowly to Merlin. He wasn’t raised in these traditions, doesn’t know the stories quite as well, but with some jogging he remembers what David had said, in the dream Merlin had walked through. 

Bathsheba was Solomon’s mother, and David’s wife; and David had had her husband killed, murder by any other name, and as a result he had lost three sons: one to the battlefield, one before he could be named, and one to be the voice of God, the one tied to the Root. 

It occurs to Merlin, as he’s making an inventory of sacrifices, that a son who was never _named_ would certainly fit the criteria of this singularity. The one who had died was known, and Bathsheba’s husband had also been remembered well enough, in holy books, in memory of sin and prices paid. Merlin himself wouldn’t have known about the missing son if David hadn’t told him.

Whatever comes next, Merlin thinks, will have to involve David somehow. It’s still impossible for Merlin to see what’s going on in the singularity, to look forward or back along the paths of action, but this seems like a reasonable conclusion for any number of reasons, even without clairvoyance having a say in the matter. 

He _could_ leave well enough alone. Instead Merlin ambles over and plonks himself down next to David. 

David had closed his eyes, perhaps to nap, though his head still facing the direction of the coffin with Merlin’s great work contained therein. He slits them open now to eye his visitor, though Merlin could swear that as a dream projection he doesn’t bring any sound of footstep or rustle of cloth, nothing but what he himself chooses to say.

The corner of David’s mouth turns up faintly, wryly, for only a moment or two. “You carry the scent of the sea, still,” he says. “And lilies of the valley.”

Merlin always forgets about that part. Flowers have scents, and his magic does too, but there’s usually not anyone around to comment; and when there is, they usually get as far as ‘huh, is that floral?’ before becoming distracted by Merlin being obnoxious. “The sea’s from Alexander,” he says, folding his legs up. “Soooooo. ...Bathsheba, huh?”

David closes his eyes again, tilts his head back to rest against metal so gently that there’s hardly a sound. “Yes,” he says. “I’d heard.”

He doesn’t say anything more immediately, which means the next question will be whether or not Merlin _cares_ enough to ask further. He’s beginning to err on the side of not caring, to easily chicken out of the conversation before it can go any heavier places; but before Merlin can unfold himself David actually does start talking again, and then Merlin is more or less stuck, at least for the moment. “It’s an odd thing,” David says slowly. “To be faced with your own sins, and know that they are yours, but to be so distant from them. The way I am now, I haven’t done those things yet — except that I have, since I remember them well.” 

It’s like the world’s worst possible form of clairvoyance, Merlin thinks, and manages not to laugh about it. 

“If Bathsheba is there, then...” David trails off, hums a melancholy twist of notes. The strings of his harp vibrate quietly in response, a low thrum underscoring David’s voice. “Ah, there is more than one of my sons in this Jerusalem, is there not?” 

“I couldn’t say for sure,” Merlin says, wincing. If he and David have had the same thought more or less independently, then that’s a few more points in favor. 

“You said it yourself,” David returns without opening his eyes. “This Jerusalem does not permit — what was it? — named quantities?”

Merlin _did_ say that, didn’t he. “And that son was never named,” Merlin says, with some resignation. “You know there’s any number of souls with names there, it’s not _completely_ literal.”

David cracks his eyes open again to peer at Merlin. “Are you trying to spare my feelings, Mage of Flowers?” he asks, without any real asperity, just frank curiosity. 

“Never,” Merlin says with a sharp cheerful grin, aiming to be as off-putting as is inhumanly possible. “I’m just saying, don’t count your chickens, and all that.” 

“I prefer to count sheep.” There’s a quick wry flicker of a smile before David sobers. ”I, too, would much rather it were not.” He lays a hand along the harp-strings, lets each resound in turn and then stops them all. “Perhaps this, too, is a price to be paid.” 

Merlin has to wonder about that — surely two and a half sons is enough? Were David’s sins considered so great that this version of him, years and years after his death, would still be paying some measure of atonement? It’s not a discussion he actually wants to start right now, but it sure is one that exists in potentiality. 

“Ah,” says David, settling back to appear as if napping again. “See? Our geniuses have come just now to the same conclusion.” 

For his own part Merlin has been keeping only a passing ear on the ever more involved conversation, staying well clear of it in other regards. There have been emotions he doesn’t need to be part of going on over there, and more to the point he didn’t, and still doesn’t, want to let anyone on the other end know how closely he’s supervising. It’ll come out eventually, of course — he’s not so much an optimist as to assume none of the culprits will speak to each other — but he can at least be long gone and back in his firmly settled prison before anyone thinks to correlate how _much_ Merlin had to do with this.

Now Merlin listens in properly again, listens to the discussions of family melodrama — David’s mouth twitches — and then the matter of the attack. “It won’t happen again,” David murmurs under his breath. “Not the same way. He called for a messenger of death, and there is one such; but divine intervention, in that manner, may only be invoked very infrequently.”

_Messenger of death_, Merlin thinks, and could smack himself. _That’s_ why the First Hassan registered, even if only briefly, as summoned. He doesn’t know what he feels about an Authority such as this working through _that_ one, but as Merlin plans not to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, he concludes that he doesn’t actually _need_ to know how he feels. 

“Are you going to tell them that?” Merlin wants to know.

Very faintly, David shakes his head. “There isn’t much point to it. Our Master will need to venture forth to reclaim the Grail, one way or another, and she will always be taking risks. The answer would be the same whether or not I said something.”

Philosophical. Merlin decides he _definitely_ prefers the chatty David, the one who is secure in his youth and shepherding, as opposed to this man half-present and caught between all of his once and future decisions. “It sounds to me like you just don’t want to get up,” he says, ribbing.

“Well,” David says. “That, too.” This time when his mouth quirks it lingers longer than before, and Merlin’s pleased to have taken the philosophy out of him. 

Then Merlin hears them start talking about the Fisher King. 

It means knights. There’s no way it doesn’t, if they’re planning to specifically catch the threads of an existing story and take on narrative roles to buoy them forward. How they plan to get Ritsuka some knights is another matter entirely, especially since Merlin can immediately identify that the best possible candidate is one Mash Kyrielight. 

Merlin sighs heavily, and drifts to his feet, waving absently at a David who won’t see it before taking himself back to pay closer attention to what Da Vinci et al are talking about. This sounds like he’s going to want to have some advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hope" is the thing with feathers-  
That perches in the soul-  
And sings the tune without the words-  
And never stops- At all-
> 
> \--"'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers", Emily Dickinson


	5. good knight unto you all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: mention of past rape, not dwelt on or graphic in description

“The first ingredient is Mash,” Romani is saying as Merlin shows up in the general vicinity of Da Vinci. It’s a neat mirror to what Merlin himself had been thinking. “Galahad was the knight who cured the Fisher King, according to most later stories. Ah... come to think of it, Mash, why _aren’t_ you here?” 

“Um,” Mash says, shoulders slumped. She’s still over by her console, watching statistics; it seems like there’s another audio feed routed in via her station. “There’s something wrong with my magical circuits.” 

“The circuits themselves are fine,” Da Vinci puts in. “It’s just that the process of activation for Mash seems to be stuck, for lack of a better word. As such, however, she can’t currently assume her Demi-Servant form, which puts her in danger if she were to leyshift with Ritsuka. She’s been largely running support from Chaldea for the time being, while we work to discern the cause of the issue.”

There’s static and a few background murmurs for a little while before Romani speaks up again. “That complicates things a little,” he admits. “I don’t recall my Arthurian legends perfectly, but I don’t think there’s a good substitute...”

Da Vinci looks at Merlin pointedly, as though expecting him to answer something. Merlin contemplates a runaround with a slate or maybe some sparkly illusory letters for maximum levels of obnoxious, but honestly, is he an illusionist or isn’t he? He changes his voice, mimicking the tones of the summon tech whose name he absolutely doesn’t remember at the moment. “There isn’t, really,” he says. “Percival and Bors traveled with Galahad, closely enough that some stories have Percival and Galahad conflated, but neither made it through unscathed.” 

“Hm?” Romani sounds briefly quiet, bemused — Merlin assumes by the new voice — but as he’s chosen someone Romani knows, it gets let slide. “Oh, I see. I assume one of you would have said if either had been contracted with Chaldea in my absence.”

“Some new faces, but no Knights of the Round,” Da Vinci confirms. “Anyway! Start with the principle of your idea, and then we’ll discuss and organize our resources accordingly. That will give you a chance to rest, too.”

There’s a brief staticky burst — a sound like a cleared throat. “I’m fine,” Romani protests, a touch more strongly than the last few things he’s said. 

“Ritsuka?” Da Vinci says, more or less patiently.

“Uh-uh,” Ritsuka reports, with some quiet glee. “He’s still flat out. Da Vinci’s got the right idea, Doctor.”

He sighs gustily. “I suppose I should know how capable your hands are. All right.” There’s a pause while he musters himself, or musters his words. Merlin shifts from foot to foot, despite the fact he has no physical weight to shift. He just needs the sense of motion while he waits. “So. With the summoning system temporarily down — ah, going by the fact Nursery Rhyme is still here, I’d assume all existing connections are secure?”

“Correct,” Da Vinci sings out. “No one new can be called for the time being, and I suspect if someone gets discorporated we’re going to have a delay before they can return to Chaldea, but all connections providing power to Servants remained intact.”

“And the trouble with the leyshift is first, breaching the conditions and protections of this Singularity, and second, mustering the power.” 

“Also correct.” Da Vinci sits back in her chair, thinking for a moment in Romani’s quiet; and Merlin can tell when she has a conclusion for the smile that lights her face. “But of course, if we had some way to offset the power costs of a full leyshift, and a confirmed set of coordinates that we know for sure we can pinpoint from here...”

“Mm. Exactly. The Temple is established on top of a conjunction of ley lines, after all, and I’m already sustaining one Servant. I think...” Another pause. This one sounds in its silence more like thinking, a measuring quiet rather than a weary one, but it’s still horribly boring, for all that it’s not more than a minute or two. “Assuming an already manifested Servant leyshifted in will have a higher activation cost, but lower maintenance than one summoned here from scratch... if I dismiss Maria I think can safely sustain up to three Servants. Any more than that, and it will threaten the integrity of the Temple; but if we bear the brunt of the energy load, it should be viable to use the leyshift even for that many from Chaldea, shouldn’t it?”

“It’s certainly worth a shot!” Da Vinci says cheerfully. “We can handle Mash ourselves.”

“Ah—” Romani starts, and Da Vinci bulls right through him by amending, “If it turns out that’s the best course of action we have. Sit back and relax, Romani, let the greatest technical minds the magical community currently has to offer get to work.”

Very quietly Romani laughs, and there’s a quiet thump. “All right,” he says. 

“Got it!” Ritsuka chimes in, and there’s some shifting of cloth sounds picked up by an overzealous microphone. “Hey, Da Vinci, is the energy really that big a deal? I know we’ve leyshifted Servants before...”

“When we really shouldn’t have,” Da Vinci says, and there is a stern glance at one particular unfortunate in the command room before she returns to business as usual. “I suppose you’re not usually involved in the details of the generators, and so on, but both summoning and leyshifting take a _phenomenal_ amount of energy. Most mages could never hope to summon a Heroic Spirit in their lifetimes, without the power dispensed during a Grail War. Chaldea’s power requirements, as I understand it, are such that during trial phases, two nuclear reactors sufficient for powering small cities still were not enough, and that’s _without_ accounting for the fluctuations of summoning and leyshifting.” 

“...Right,” Ritsuka says, sounding a little strained. “So. The Temple. Funding the leyshifts so we don’t cause a giant, Chaldea-shaped blackout.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Da Vinci agrees. “So! While we’re ensuring all our systems are in working order, and that the procedures for building in Jerusalem as an acceptable power source are in place, let’s talk about who’s the best idea to send. Let’s come back to the issue of Mash.”

Mash, Merlin notes on a sidelong look, is biting her lip like she wants to say something and isn’t quite sure about interceding, and Da Vinci’s focused on the problem at hand. He can’t quite catch Mash’s eye from here, though, and Da Vinci probably is going to want his input. He’ll go bother her in a bit if nothing shakes out in the interim.

“I’m going to go ahead and assume that even if we can’t get specifically relevant knights, that any Knight of the Round Table wouldn’t be a bad choice,” Da Vinci says, laying reasoning out. “And they’ll certainly present much fewer difficulties than any Divine Spirits.”

...Ah, come to think of it, there is _one_ candidate Merlin can call to mind who’s specifically relevant, but he won’t thank Merlin for it. “Actually,” Merlin puts in anyway, keeping his voice shifted. “Whether or not Mash goes, Lancelot may be a good idea. He’s had some brief dealings with the Fisher King.”

“Wait, he has?” Ritsuka wants to know, sharp and staticky. “What do you mean, dealings?” 

“Well,” Merlin hedges. “It depends which version of the story you get, but it’s generally agreed that Galahad’s mother was the daughter of the Fisher King.” He doesn’t necessarily want to trot out the whole sordid tale — it’s awkward to say the least, when all your misfortunes take place on a world-wide stage of centuries-old legends. It gets, somehow, _more_ awkward when you then recount the truths of those things, hold them up next to a hundred hundred romances. 

There’s a mild frown from Da Vinci, the barest of marks between her brows before her expression clears up again. “Ah,” she says. “It’s like that, is it?”

Merlin will grudgingly agree to be pleased with Da Vinci’s sharp perceptions for this moment, since they’re not directed _precisely_ at him. She’s skipped about four steps of explanation, steps which Merlin does not now have to explicate.

“What do you mean, it’s like that?” Ritsuka wants to know. “I thought the only person Lancelot ever loved was Guinevere?” She sounds somewhere between guilty and genuinely confused, if Merlin had to make a guess at the tone of her voice through thousands of years of obfuscating static. 

“That’s exactly right,” Da Vinci says, and Merlin nods to corroborate this, just in case anyone was wondering. “And while, of course, it’s perfectly possible to have sex with someone you don’t love, I think we can safely say that’s not the kind of person Lancelot is.”

“The how depends on which version of the story is told,” Merlin cuts in. It’s true. He hasn’t actually asked, and he’s doing Lancelot the courtesy of not looking. “But no matter which way you shake it, Lancelot was tricked into lying with the king’s daughter. And while not many people would have thought of it like that back then, these days there’s a pretty specific name for sex under false pretenses! ...Anyway, that’s why no one really talks about where Galahad came from.”

“...oh,” Ritsuka says, sounding quiet and troubled. “I didn’t know.”

“Well,” Merlin says, and cuts himself off when Da Vinci raises her eyebrows at him. —Ah, yeah, he is kind of starting to sound like he knows the Knights of the Round Table firsthand, doesn’t he? Like someone who was there, rather than just someone who lives in Chaldea and happens to see Sir Gawain over breakfast now and again.

“Unfortunately, that happens a lot,” Da Vinci says, more soberly. “There’s _still_ a prevailing notion that men can’t be raped, so those who suffer it often simply never speak of it. And while this is a very serious topic which deserves proper thought, I’m going to rush us on ahead for now, and we can revisit this when everyone’s home safe and sound. If Galahad’s mother _is_ of the Fisher King’s family, then logically Lancelot has been to his kingdom before.” There’s another look at Merlin, this time for confirmation.

Merlin nods an agreement. “He’d heard of the curse, and like any decent knight wanted to help, but was told he was not the one who would ask the question.” His personal suspicion is that there was some clairvoyance involved. They used to be thicker on the ground, Seers; but that was then. Either way, they’re where they are now. “So from a narrative standpoint, if you had to pick a knight, Lancelot would be the best option.”

“If he’s okay with it,” Ritsuka puts in, with a lingering mulishness. 

“He understands duty,” Merlin says, and it’s true; any of the Knights of the Round will drag themselves weak and bleeding after their duty, in pursuit of the right thing, the honorable thing. 

“...you sound like you know him well?” Ritsuka says slowly then. It’s half a question. Da Vinci does not roll her eyes at Merlin, but there’s a certain wry sarcasm to the sidelong look she gives him. Merlin feels judged. 

“I’ve been reading a lot,” Merlin says, which is not the best of his excuses, but kind of technically true, he guesses. “Anyway! That leaves you with two more slots. Thoughts?” 

There’s a few moments before Ritsuka responds, as if she has to take her time about putting away any strange and lingering suspicions. ”If we want to stick with knights, that pretty much limits the options anyway, doesn’t it? Mmm... Da Vinci, Mash, what do you think?”

“As a strategic note, sticking purely with knights is likely to overload you with Sabers,” Da Vinci says. There’s another look at Merlin — she pointedly opens up a notepad document and gestures at her keyboard, as if to further judge his complete lack of disguise by offering him an out from speaking — but all Merlin does is shake his head. Of the Servants with whom Ritsuka and Chaldea have contracted, those already mentioned have closest tie to the Fisher-King and to the Grail-Quest. 

Da Vinci makes a small moue at him, vaguely disappointed, and goes back to standard tactical thinking. “You have Nursery Rhyme, and you haven’t seen much in the way of mounted soldiers, correct?”

“Uhh,” Ritsuka says, pausing to think back. “Yeah, that’s right. A lot of swords and lances, though.” 

“At least one of the two remaining should be an Archer if possible, then,” Da Vinci suggests. “Which, since we’re on the topic of knights, brings one specific to mind.”

“Mmm... Oh! You’re thinking of Tristan, right?” Ritsuka makes a thoughtful noise; there’s some conversation on the other side which goes indistinct with cross-talk as those on the other side confer. 

Merlin wonders at the wisdom of Tristan, whose outlook is not precisely what he would call _hopeful_, on the whole. For a Singularity whose theme seems to be the _forgotten_, his sense of tragedy might not be the most useful tool. David, though... David, who _does_ know at least a semblance of Jerusalem, and who is of the family line — technically all the way unto Galahad, if the stories about Lancelot’s heritage are to be believed. David, who has been King of Israel, and who Merlin _suspects_ knows what he’s up to, the way he’s specifically chosen to sit down next to Coffin 4.

He reaches over Da Vinci for her keyboard, forgetting for a moment that he’s supposed to be doing the intangible dream phantasm thing. Da Vinci solves this forgetting by shifting at precisely the worst moment and putting her hand through Merlin’s ribs. “_Ow_,” Merlin says, although the whole thing just felt like a highly personal tickle. 

Da Vinci takes her hand back and eyes it curiously. Merlin hesitates to ask what knowledge she might possibly have gleaned. While she’s distracted, though, he takes the opportunity to tap out some quick words on the topic of David, going with a maximum of abbreviations and chatspeak just to be sure she won’t ask him to do it this way again.

When he’s done and has stepped back, Da Vinci reads the whole thing through — makes a prim and disapproving face at Merlin’s helpful shorthand — and then promptly shifts her attitude to thoughtful and nods. “David wouldn’t be a bad choice either,” she says aloud. 

“Huh?” Ritsuka says, and, “_Ooh_, I need to _talk to him_.”

The way she says it promises that she does not intend for David to enjoy the experience. Based on this alone, Merlin thinks David should definitely be sent to Jerusalem; but also, there’s something poetic and correct about the son and the father, and the father taking up responsibilities previously laid down. If there is justice anywhere wound through the threads binding them all together, that weight will have its own effect on the Singularity.

Merlin hopes.

He lets Da Vinci and Ritsuka dicker over who their wisest choices are versus who’s likely to have the most fun versus planning for whatever will be unleashed on them in the unnamed king’s palace. There’s occasional input from those around Ritsuka on the other side — a vague stirred word from Romani, or a thoughtful question from one of the Phantom Spirits. Eventually, as it was bound to do, the topic comes around to Mash again; to the necessity of Galahad, and to the safety of sending Mash, who can’t take up her previous skills at defense.

It _isn’t_ safe. Ritsuka argues, fairly successfully, that she’s not safe either. Especially back when they began all this, she didn’t have much more training than Mash does now. 

“But you did have Mash protecting you,” Da Vinci says soberly. “And even when she barely grasped her Noble Phantasm, Mash’s baseline skillset made her nearly unparalleled at defense.”

“Yes, but—”

“I can do it,” Mash interrupts, with a sudden firmness. Well, Merlin supposes he’s not the only one getting impatient with all the back and forth and getting practically nowhere. Most of the people in the command room immediately focus on Mash, and her shoulders curve in a little with the weight of all the regard, but she doesn’t cave. 

A stalwart shield, to the core. 

“Um,” she says, and puts her shoulders right back down with a sharp exhalation. “That is— it’s necessary for our best chances, isn’t it? Senpai will be there, and I can... hang back. There will be at least three Servants capable of protecting us, and I’m not _completely_ helpless without my magical circuits working. So... I’ll do it.”

“Are you _sure_?” Ritsuka asks, the accompanying burst of static making her sound twice as worried. 

“I can do it,” Mash says again. It’s not quite a yes, Merlin notes, but no one else seems to be about to split those particular hairs. It’s fine. Lancelot will be there, after all. 

Ignoring that he hasn’t technically said he’ll go, yet. Merlin is decently sure of a yes.

If Mash is going along, though, that gives Merlin the perfect vehicle for something he’d thought of earlier: getting a piece of the good doctor’s genetic material. Well, he’ll still have to create something to send it _back_, but he can definitely send something with her. He’s got at _least_ half an hour, he suspects. That’s definitely enough time for someone to create an item usable for this purpose.

...not that Merlin’s skill in item creation is amazing, but he’s just going to cheat via dreams and flowers anyway, so it’s not a problem.

There’s some lingering discussion of practicalities, of who to send where — a revisiting of the Tristan choice, which doesn’t end any differently — and what resources, if any, can or should be passed along the leyshift while they have the narrow window open. Merlin, not wasting any time, ambles over to find a spot on the floor near Mash and starts dreaming up a blood sampler. Some kind of briar, probably, for the thorns and the layers of meaning: walls and the breaching of them, pain and the symbolic weight of blood sacrifice. 

“—Merlin?” 

He glances up blurry-eyed from the half formed thing of pink and thorns between his hands to see Mash, leaning over slightly. “I need to go and talk to someone,” she says. “I think I have an idea about the animals surrounding the palace, I just need to find Jaguar Warrior. Are you... what are you doing?”

“I’m making something,” he says cheerfully, tugging it apart in his fingers as it tries to turn into a rose. “Something I want you to take with you, when you go. It should help.”

The fact that Mash just _accepts_ this, nods as if he’s told her something completely sensible and reasonable, and simply turns to recruit another tech to keep an eye on Ritsuka’s readings— frankly, Merlin thinks, it’s still ridiculous she trusts him this much. But there it is. He hunkers back down to finish what he’s doing. 

Unfortunately, he concludes, a rose _is_ the best shape. It has other connotations, but when it comes to blood and symbolism, there’s really not much of a better option. He murmurs slow, careful incantations, spins the idea into existence white and blank, a ghost of a flower, and gives to it something of his own magic, a little piece of this dream of him to tie it back to him even across time and space and obstacles. The smaller a thing, the easier the transit, the less there is to fight. 

Empty, he tells it, and hungry, and drifts off across the command room to introduce the nascent thing to the scent of incense and pine, the low thrumming heat of potential and memory. It shapes up delicate and perfect, and when Merlin bends his head over it he smells frankincense, which is probably appropriate. In his hands it’s light enough that it doesn’t feel like a real thing, but it has some level of substance anyway. 

Merlin sharpens its thorns, one by one, and eventually notices that David is watching him, looking somewhat recovered from earlier. “What does it mean?” David asks, idly curious, when he notices that he has Merlin’s attention in turn.

In response Merlin hitches a shoulder and curves one hand around the rose’s petals. “It really depends,” he says, light to brush it off. “Flowers have developed different meanings in different places. Immortality in one place, love in another, and so on.”

“And what about this place?” The way David tilts his head seems to indicate Coffin 4, not just Chaldea in general.

Merlin thinks longingly about heaving a deep sigh, but apparently he’s surrounded by people who are determined to _see_ him at all costs, and so he does not. “Oh, you know,” he says airily. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Let’s say... innocence.” It’s trite, but it can be found on any flower language website, it will theoretically get David off his back, and if Merlin stretches his definition of innocence to include someone who’s never had much opportunity to make his own choices, it’s kind of even applicable.

David laughs, amused and sudden. “Innocence,” he repeats. “I suppose so.”

This does not fill Merlin with confidence, so instead of continuing the conversation he gets up — _again_ — and goes off to lurk near the door to the command room where he’ll be able to see Mash — or, for that matter, any of the knights — before they can surprise him.

Mash returns before Lancelot and Tristan can arrive. She’s carrying a glass vessel like a perfume bottle for spritzing, and there’s a certain soft magical weight to the liquid in it. Merlin eyes this and wants to know what liquid she could possibly have gotten from Jaguar Warrior. His answer isn’t far off; as soon as Mash is in range she beams at Merlin and holds up her prize. “It’s jaguar musk,” she explains.

This answers some questions, and generates some more that Merlin isn’t _completely_ sure he wants the answer to. “Ah, to make the animals think you’re a large predator,” he says aloud, putting the practical dots together. “Good thinking!” 

Mash colors a little under the praise. “I just remembered,” she says. “In Babylonia, the jungle went quiet before Jaguar Warrior showed up. All of the other creatures were scared of her. So, I thought...”

Merlin nods along, following the train of thought. She’s divine, too, albeit the least of the divinities that have any tie to Chaldea. It will take a very determined animal to decide it wants to face whatever smells like a divine jaguar. “It makes sense,” he says, and shoves the rose at Mash. “Here.”

She takes it in the other hand, looking it over carefully from top to bottom, and finally gives him a quizzical look. “What should I do with this?”

“Give it to Romani, when you see him,” Merlin says easily. He’s not going to tell her what it does, so that everyone except him can honestly say they had _no idea_ it was a vampire rose. “It should help us get a better lock on him.”

At this explanation Mash looks the flower over again, like she’ll see something more to it on a second assessment. “...all right,” she says finally, and carefully tucks it into one pocket of her cardigan. The bottle of jaguar musk goes in the other. They’re not the substitutes for a shield Merlin would have chosen to give her, necessarily, but they will do their jobs just as she will. 

Merlin steps aside, and Mash moves past him into the command room, murmuring her excuses to the tech who had her position. She doesn’t reclaim it, though — it wouldn’t be very useful, after all, since she’ll be leyshifting soon. Instead she moves toward Da Vinci, presumably to indicate her readiness.

There are footsteps in the hall. Merlin makes himself invisible as soon as he recognizes the sound; and sure enough, as he steps further to the side and turns around again, he sees crimson hair, white armor — Tristan and Lancelot, in quiet conversation as they approach. 

...It’s not that he’s avoiding them, he’s just not really in the mood for a knightly conversation. Merlin drifts back into the command room, and even as he does, out of the corner of his eye he catches Tristan stopping, inhaling deeply with his lips parted. Lancelot stops a few moments later, looking back. “What is it?”

“...it’s nothing,” Tristan says a moment later, but his head turns toward Merlin, and there’s the faintest of melancholy smiles. “I thought I smelled something.”

He doesn’t volunteer anything more, and Lancelot doesn’t ask. Merlin vacates the immediate area in a hurry in favor of going to perch over the coffins again, where no one will be able to see, smell, or otherwise bother his invisible presence. _Rude_. 

Somehow, it bothers him more that Tristan had specifically noticed something and ignored it, than it might have if he’d been wholly called out on his disappearing trick. This isn’t at all rational, Merlin knows, and is also probably why Tristan didn’t get any more specific than _I thought I smelled something_. 

Across the room, Mash reassures Ritsuka that she really is up for this, that everything will definitely be all right. And then, thirty seconds later, she reassures Ritsuka of the exact same thing, once more. It’s... what’s the word. Sweet. Merlin stays well clear, tucking his legs up under him to make the smallest possible target, perched three coffins over from the one striving to bridge Jerusalem and Chaldea even now. 

Like this he watches them go. Mash steps easily into the coffin she’s accustomed to. David claims the third one in line, and both of the knights give the out-of-order sign a curious look. “It’s all fine,” Da Vinci says cheerfully of Coffin 4, shooing Tristan and Lancelot further down the first bank with an easy flap of her gauntlet. “Repairs on that one are nearly complete.”

Tristan, especially, lingers; but there are more important things to do than wonder about it, Merlin is sure, with duty calling his name. Sure enough, a few moments of lingering later, Tristan moves on, and allows a coffin lid to be closed after him.

The command room bustles with activity, with the precise sequence of steps needed to hurtle several people, only one of them truly flesh and blood, across thousands of years to a place that doesn’t quite exist. Merlin sits and contemplates the flower Mash carries, the thing tagged with a little vestige of his own magic just to send its prize back to him, and this is what tells him when the leyshift is successful, more than anything else. 

Even sharing the power drain with the Temple in Jerusalem, lights flicker and dim, a monumental hum shivering the metal below everyone’s feet. Coffins light; vital statistics light up on screens for monitoring, while Da Vinci dedicates half of her screen real estate to watching the power readings and how much is being sent to whom, how far the vastly extended tethers can stretch without snapping. Merlin cups his hand like he’s holding something and thinks of flowers, and his creation blinks out of existence only to reappear very, very distantly, at the edges of where Merlin can see, and even then only visible for that it’s _his_. Most of this Singularity is still completely blank to Merlin, shrouded and unfriendly and repelling.

But here is a small growing thing, a little piece of color twined near Galahad’s heart, and Merlin can see where it’s gone, like a dying flashlight in a dark room. 

He waits, and he waits. 

And then: Mash gives the flower over. Merlin feels the delight in it — or what passes for delight in a plant — at fulfilling the purpose it was designed for, biting deep and dragging blood into it. It’s very good blood, Merlin understands. Very nourishing. Hollow-pointed thorns draw it up the stem and flush it crimson through the petals, till the rose is full and blooming-bloated with blood. 

Just like that, Merlin can see. Still not a lot, but he can see Romani, can see him in the guise of King Solomon. He’s blurry around the edges with distance and the issue of the obscuring Singularity, but he exists. 

The rose, Merlin discovers, likes the tattoos that some of its thorns are sunk into. These are apparently _especially_ good for blooming with. Merlin coaxes it to use a little of that delicious, growing magic to pass some of the blood back to Merlin. 

Physics disagrees. Politely, Merlin tells physics to bite him, and in his cupped hand beads of crimson begin to well up, slow and dragging but real. Or true, at least, even if they might not be _completely_ real. 

—Ah, he’s going to have to actually touch the coffin again.

It’ll be fine. He’s prepared for the sledgehammer of yearning this time, he thinks, and half-asleep, still focused on the rose, Merlin topples himself off his perch and slopes toward Coffin 4. Someone says something to him, which he entirely doesn’t hear, as far away as he is. In the distance he can see the wise king of Israel; before him is the same man. Sort-of. An echo of him, waiting.

Merlin shoves his hand through the metal wall of the coffin, flinging droplets off his fingers and into the protecting dark to join the other pieces. Electricity flickers up the length of his arm in live-wire retaliation, sets Merlin to uncontrollable shivering as it stitches power-sparks down his spine and touches the heart that isn’t even _here_. It skips a beat or two — he remembers how to pull his arm back, hopes it’s been enough — and finally manages to stagger backward. 

He sits down hard, halfway through a chair, with phantom sparks prickling painfully through him. He’s sure he’s smoking, but when he looks down at himself he’s as normal as he can be given the circumstances — pink and translucent, if dimmer than he was. One of his hands flickers in and out like a bad light in a marquee.

Maybe he’ll just sit on the floor for a while. If he’s intangible no one will bother him, right?

Right.


	6. if we be friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: mentions of past incest and rape, neither graphic nor dwelt on.

Eventually Merlin realizes Da Vinci is leaning over him with something humming interestingly in one hand. He tilts his head back to squint up at her, vague and distant. Something about the image seems wrong, and it takes a moment or five to come to him. “Shouldn’t you be monitoring something?”

“Yes, I should be,” Da Vinci agrees. “Even if all _is_ quiet on the Jerusalem front while they sally forth— which is why it would be much more convenient if you could collapse on the other side of the command room. Do you mind?” 

In concept Merlin doesn’t mind, but in practice getting up seems actually very hard. Doing a lot of things seems very far out of reach. Merlin waves his hand at her, not even dismissively, just a wave. A gesture. His fingers flicker. 

Da Vinci attempts, hopefully, to grab his hand. It doesn’t really work, but Merlin feels her intent as their existences overlay for a brief moment. She really does mean well. And maybe also to browbeat him a little, but that’s just because he is who he is and he’s being a cagey asshole. 

“Wait,” Merlin says, and, “Try that again.” The phantom pins and needles of the lingering power have faded by now, too. This time he offers her his hand, smiling lazily and half-lidded, and really _trying_ to be substantial at least in that one spot. It’s less effort than every other form of motivation. 

This time when she brushes his hand, it’s a collision instead of an intersection; she manages to wrap her fingers around his, and promptly starts dragging him back toward where her computers are. Merlin skids along the metal of the command room floor, scooted along on the dream of his robe, and laughs for how ridiculous the whole thing is.

Da Vinci drops his hand and settles back into her chair, humming lightly as she reorganizes her various screens. “There,” she says, with some satisfaction. “Collapse all you like, now. What was that about?”

“Blood sample,” Merlin explains, seeing for the moment no reason to hide _that_. 

Her interest perks; she turns her gaze solidly on him with raised eyebrows. “And how exactly did you do that? Inquiring minds want to know.”

He supposes it’s not entirely out of the question to think he might answer. “I gave Mash a rose,” he tells Da Vinci, which is both completely true and not very helpful, at least by his best estimation. 

“I can’t decide if you’re better or worse like this,” she tells him in return. “I’m going to assume you did something illegal with a flower and leave it at that, since I really do need to focus on them. It certainly looks like it took it out of you, anyway! You may as well rest there for a little while while we monitor everything.”

Wistfully Merlin thinks of just giving up staying here and popping back to Avalon for a full-on nap, but there’s still things to do here. He just nods instead, tugs his hood up and lets his eyes close, and listens to the activity of the command room around him. Key clicks and electronic chirps, murmuring and querying back and forth between the people. There are occasional exchanges between Chaldea and Jerusalem, but mostly the lines are kept clear so there can be instant responsiveness if Ritsuka needs help.

In distant Avalon, where his body waits, Merlin can feel energy flowing back into him. He’ll be fine in a bit, it’ll just take a little longer for this projection to be operating at as close to maximum potential as he can manage. So he’s still simply listening when the secondhand stream of Ritsuka’s voice comes on, duller and more overlaid with noise but still distinct. Romani’s the one who answers her, since her questions are for him. Merlin slits his eyes open to see if Da Vinci’s about to add the peanut gallery, but instead he catches her in the act of muting her own microphone, perhaps so she isn’t tempted to do exactly that.

“It sounds serious,” Da Vinci murmurs. “We’ll let them talk, don’t you think? ...ah, I wonder if Romani’s remembered we’re getting all of this, too.” She cups her chin with one hand, expression faintly troubled, and Merlin listens to the conversation more closely: listens to the talk of Ars Almadel Salomonis, of what it takes to give magic to all of humanity.

He’s not surprised, really, by any of it. He’s known for a long time the only reason he himself can survive Avalon is that he’s half demon. Power isn’t inherently good or evil, really: it just _is, _a thing with a weight like gravity, something that draws everything around it and warps the world out of shape. So: of course Solomon required the 72 demons of his stories to contain and shape enough magical power to do what he did.

And of course there was blood. 

“I keep thinking I should know the name Tamar,” Da Vinci says idly, as if Romani and Ritsuka aren’t talking of death on the other side of the line. “Like I’ve read about her somewhere before. Ah... hm.” Merlin cranes his neck to see what she’s doing, which turns out to be calling up multiple religious texts and running a search function. “No, not the wife of Judah, she predates David...”

Merlin thinks of the fortitude required to stay conscious — and, more than that, rational enough to speak — while cut open, while the terribly exacting work of ink and blood is done. Helpfully his imagination offers him the younger Solomon, a king nevertheless unclear on how to do anything but what he sees, what he’s told. It’s not a particularly happy image, nor a fair one. 

Of kings, much is demanded, and much is given. The divine right — maybe the worst part is that Merlin isn’t surprised, either, by what Romani says of Tamar’s end. There are worse magics than this, ones that demand further sacrifices in power. One life, for the power to do as Solomon did? For some that’s a pittance. 

Not Romani, though, Merlin thinks. Not judging by the weight in his voice, the crack as he speaks of the _Will of God_. 

...anyway, it’s not like he’s the first Heroic Spirit to have killed people, or to have acted unjustly and become a tragic hero. If anything, the remarkable part here is the change. How does a person learn and grow, when their life is already over, when they have already become everything they were going to be? 

Apparently, by becoming human. 

“Ah,” Da Vinci says some few moments later. “Tamar. ...ah.” A sigh. “She was one of David’s daughters, who was raped by her half-brother Amnon. In brief, David didn’t actually punish Amnon, which was deeply offensive to Absalom.” _That_ name Merlin knows, and he can see where this story is going before Da Vinci relays it, in clipped sentences which probably belie the depth of feeling beneath. “Absalom held his peace for a little while. When his father did not act, he killed Amnon himself. Now a murderer and a fratricide to boot, Absalom fled David’s domains. He led a rebellion of some sort — I’m omitting details. The long and the short is that this is how Absalom died. No further mention is made of Tamar that I can find on a first search.”

She’s not especially quiet — most of the techs can probably hear her in addition to the fraught conversation taking place in Jerusalem. There aren’t many responses, just some quiet murmurs from person to person. To a one, they’re fixed on their work. It says something, Merlin thinks, that there’s more response for the fact of Romani existing than the accounting of his various horrors. 

“Well,” Da Vinci says, into the quiet. “I suppose I understand Ritsuka’s impulse to give David a ‘talking-to.’” 

Merlin laughs despite himself. “I don’t think it will do much good, except for Ritsuka.”

“It should at least be worth filming,” Da Vinci says comfortably. “Feeling more coherent?” 

“I’m always coherent,” Merlin says. It’s a blatant lie, but an automatic and easy one. “Sounds like they’re on their way now?” 

“Mmhm.” Da Vinci arrays her fingers together. “We’re getting closer. How is your work looking?”

Merlin tries again to look where his flower is, to look at Romani. He can see a little, still in the same dark-shrouded way. Only this, and only so far: but he is there, and his face is wet-shiny with tears. Immediately Merlin feels as if he shouldn’t have looked, and he draws back swiftly. “There’s plenty of connections,” he reports cheerfully. “If nothing else, I’ll grab him and shove him into the coffin myself. Do you have the date hack sorted?”

She flaps her hand at him as if to say _please_. “Long since. Merlin—”

Merlin’s already braced for some horribly personal query that he’s going to have to just lie his entire ass off about, but Da Vinci is interrupted before she can get that far, a quick burst of static and a solid click from the radio connection. “Still there, Chaldea?” Romani asks, with a brittle sort of cheer— the type that is pretending very hard, and hopes no one looks at it too closely.

Da Vinci unmutes them. “Still here,” she sings out. “All present and according to plan, all signals strong.”

“Ah,” Romani says, with a distant sort of vagueness. “That’s... good. That’s good to know.”

Because most of the time Merlin is not an active idiot, he can tell there’s things not being said that one or the other of them wants to say, but as per usual the mysteries hidden in the human head are not subject to his clairvoyance. He prods Da Vinci in the knee instead. 

Da Vinci gives him a pointedly stern look for that. “So,” she says to Romani, turning her gaze away from Merlin and proceeding to ignore him. “How’s Jerusalem doing?”

Romani still sounds scattered, when he speaks. “Good,” he says again. “Signals are holding steady, and it sounds like Ritsuka isn’t having _too_ much trouble. Ah... you heard all that, didn’t you?” 

“We sure did.” Da Vinci’s eyes are half closed as she speaks. It makes Merlin wonder about what’s going on in her head. He keeps the questions to himself, though, as she goes on. “It’s always strange, isn’t it? Meeting someone, and knowing their legend already. You know the highs and lows of their life, the details of how they died. Every painful tragedy... but so few of the stories pass down how the heroes _felt_ about it. And isn’t that an awkward question to ask!” 

At first glance it seems like a tangent, a non sequitur. Then Romani laughs, static obscuring whatever emotion might be in it, except for that he sounds gentle. “It is,” he says. “Isn’t it? These days, studying mythology feels so terribly invasive...” 

The thought doesn’t get finished. He sighs. “I know you said you meant to try, to find a way to bring me back,” he says then, as if it’s a perfectly logical continuation. “But... it’s all right, you know? If you don’t. I’ve already...”

There he stops again. The man really could do to finish a sentence now and then. Da Vinci nods along as if she’s considering it, as if Romani is right in the room with her to read in her face how stupid he’s being, but it takes some several moments for her to actually answer. “You anticipate the distance will collapse once the pretender is dealt with, correct?”

It’s a complete dismissal. There’s not much else she can do, honestly, by Merlin’s estimation. Not without hinting that all the preparations are already in place, that all that really remains is the doing of it; not without buckling down into a discussion of sins which they are all too much in the middle of a Singularity to have. Merlin predicts that Da Vinci will be perfectly happy to argue with Romani later.

Quiet in Jerusalem for several moments. Romani clears his throat as the connection crackles softly. “...I think so,” he says. “His force is what keeps my territory at this remove. If he’s no longer actively rejecting me, then the distance will close as the Temple attempts to be where it should be in the first place. Why do you ask?”

“To make you stop saying foolish things,” Da Vinci says, finding her ground in competent cheer once again. “Also, it’s possible that you or David will be required, at the end.”

“It’s not as if I _like_ being stuck here,” Romani mutters, a quiet sullenness creeping into his words. It’s much better than the melancholy pain from earlier. “It’s just more important to keep the Temple standing, right now.”

“I know,” Da Vinci says simply. “You play the role of support well.”

“I wonder, sometimes,” he says. “If without that last vision, if I still would have wanted to become a doctor. I think I would; but it’s hard to tell.” 

“I can hardly imagine you not.” Da Vinci sounds thoughtful. “Perhaps...” And then her eyes drop to Merlin, and drag back up to the screen, and she says nothing more on that. “Anything changing over there?”

A pause, as though for assessment. “Not yet,” Romani says. “...I guess it’s a good thing I’m used to waiting on Ritsuka like this, huh?”

It’s Da Vinci’s turn to laugh, quiet and sure. “It should get easier,” she says. 

“It doesn’t,” he agrees. 


	7. restore amends

The silence grows again, bent only by the same comfortable command-room sounds as ever, and the hiss-crackle-pop of the intermittent static. Every now and then the sounds of the more distant voices in Jerusalem are picked up, but nothing intelligible: only the acknowledgement and reminder that other beings are there, and true enough, for now. What finally changes the quiet is a report: “Ritsuka’s and Mash’s vital signals are both picking up,” reports the tech who took over that monitoring. “I think they have contact.”

Da Vinci relays this to Romani. “...ah,” he says. “The ground is shaking here. It sounds like... this is it.”

“In which case we all need to focus,” Da Vinci says comfortably. This is accompanied by a look over and down at Merlin, one that carries a weight of intent and direction. Merlin is pretty sure he knows what she’s getting at even without formal words involved, and so he gets himself up to his feet, slow and careful. He feels more like himself now.

“We sure do,” Romani says, resigned. “Hey, Da Vinci.”

“Hm?”

“...Thanks.”

“We’ll keep watch for you,” Da Vinci says, which is probably the most reassuring thing she can say without being revealing. “Do what you need to do.”

She mutes the connection then, still listening with a sharp ear, and looks at Merlin again, this time a full and conscious turn of her attention instead of something that’s only sidelong. “One chance, you said.”

“Relax,” Merlin says. “We’re very competent.”

“We are,” Da Vinci concurs. “Which is why I think I will save relaxing for later, when everyone’s home safely. Go on, Merlin. Shout if you need assistance, but I’m trusting you to handle this.”

Merlin wrinkles his nose up at her, the next best thing to downright scowling. “People keep doing that,” he says, judging. He wishes they’d stop.

“You haven’t yet failed to come through for us,” she says brightly, and makes shooing motions at him. “I’ll put your argument on the books for later.”

Horror of horrors, he doesn’t have a rebuttal for this, and there’s something gross and warm in his chest. He can’t even bring himself to leave her with a rude gesture as he drifts off back to the Klein Coffins, back to the presence that waits. Here, still, Alexander the youth slumbers between coffins, tucked up cozily and netted down in sleep by Merlin’s own magic. Here there is Temple incense-scent, salt-sea from Alexander, the many flowers of the garden from Merlin. 

Merlin sits down in front of the coffin and sets himself to wait, casting his gaze to the place where the touch of his flower illuminates Romani. He’s never had patience in much supply, but he can manage a little, like this. Just a little.

There are voices in the command room, which Merlin can’t really hear or process, with his attention as far away as it is. Thus, his first clue that victory is proceeding apace is the slow breakup of the cloaking, rejecting darkness. Romani becomes a little easier to see, and then a little easier, and then a little easier still, like he himself has a luminescence in addition to the small flashlight of Merlin’s magic upon him.

Watching is an old and simple role, one Merlin’s been accustomed to for a thousand years and more, now. To watch, to record, to bear witness. Everything he sees, in the palace in Jerusalem, he’s going to make sure to remember.

Solomon’s clairvoyance, his offer of sacrifice, splits rainbows throughout the palace and through Merlin’s field of view, even as Merlin is trying to figure out some way to raise an objection to sacrifice from where he is. It’s distracting, not quite consuming — Merlin can just barely make sense of what he’s seeing, accustomed to his vision going far afield as he is. This is something else, even from what Merlin’s used to.

So he misses much of the conversation; but he’s painfully, vibrantly aware of when the Grail is handed over, when it clatters from the nameless king to rattle across stone, to land improbably upright and beckoning. There is a weight to it, a gravity that pulls the eye and the hand to it, and even from this distance Merlin can feel it.

And he can hear it whispering to King Solomon, to Doctor Roman, to the man who may yet be. Abruptly Merlin realizes there’s a small hole in his plan: that when Solomon was incarnated before, it was the work of the Grail as well. This one, he thinks, is not that one’s equal— there would have to be some catch, there always is with wishes— and in all likelihood if Romani became properly, fully _alive_ again right here and now, the connection Merlin has would no longer be to _him._ Romani can’t take that offer. He has to not.

Merlin holds on to the tenuous connection between them and wonders if he can yell down it not to be an idiot. He might be murmuring under his breath, something about _come on come on don’t be stupid doctor_, but he surely doesn’t expect it to work.

If they just do like they have with every other Grail, secure it and bring it home where it can’t be causing any further trouble, all will be well. Silently Merlin urges Mash to get hands on it before Romani can.

As if she could hear him. Watching gets _very annoying_ sometimes, no matter how often Merlin resigns himself to it.

Mentally, he yanks on the way that stretches between them again, and—

And—

There’s a shadow that wasn’t there before, stretching away from Romani. Merlin sees it in unexpectedly sharp relief, a long stretch of darkness cast like a path back toward the door, back toward the place whence they all came. A possibility, something finally, finally visible.

Did Merlin do that, or Mash, or did the Grail? And does it matter why, if when Romani sees it, he makes the choice, and turns away from the too-shallow well?

Merlin lets out a shivery sigh of relief and holds fast as the spirits and humans farewell each other, _until we meet again_ a solemn chorus of hope even in goodbyes. Words fly by him, only motions seen — the way the king-who-was kneels paralyzed, unable to conceptualize that a place for him still waits, until he’s hauled up, the way everyone begins to gather and finally trace that shadow back.

And there is, in it all, a lamp that stays lit, a quiet beacon even when there is no way for it to be shining. Hope, Merlin thinks dreamily. Hope, and persistence, always. 

The knights, the humans, those who may yet return to Chaldea: they flee the collapsing palace in a wild rush, and Merlin’s vision goes with them, his own heart pounding a steady drumbeat accompaniment to the flight toward home. Here is their moment of truth and testing, coming up fast. Merlin sees the knights go ahead, one at a time toward where they may be returned the way they came— he barely even has the presence of mind to think that now he _will_ be seen and known. It doesn’t matter, right now, not with all his focus on that flower and the little piece of connection.

A coffin opens. A knight steps lightly out to the floor, and immediately moves over to where Merlin is. “So that’s what it is,” Tristan says with interest, and, “You really didn’t need to hide. It’s a sorrowful thing, that you thought you did.”

Merlin is too busy to give _him_ a rude gesture, either, and isn’t that a sad statement in and of itself.

Lancelot, and David. Lancelot hangs back; David steps toward Merlin light-footed and still echoing song, like plucked harp-strings are simply part of who he is, right now. “If there is any further knowing you need from me, take it,” David says, low and earnest, entirely too open for a king. This is the David who was, and the David who is capable of change, isn’t it.

Still Merlin is too wrapped up in watching to answer, his thoughts far and far away, really only vaguely conscious that things are happening where his secondary projection is in the first place. He is three layers removed from his real existence, watching Ritsuka and Mash hold with arms outstretched, watching Romani run the final few steps out of a place that no longer exists—

—”Timestamp corruption utility, _run_,” says Da Vinci in the distance, the only words Merlin really catches, and that only because they’re absolutely vital—

Merlin grabs at an invisible tether suddenly made more solid by Chaldea’s systems, grabs at his thorns sunk deep into flesh, and _pulls_. 

Romani isn’t anywhere Merlin can see him any longer, but there’s a tug, the feeling of a weight sailing and then sticking, a line suddenly pulled taut where there was slack before. He’s still there. There’s enough of him still there to bend the shape of the world around him. Magically Merlin hauls at the weight, exerts all the force he can, and the presence he’s snagged shifts a little, but not very far at all. It’s still something. He didn’t expect this to be _perfectly_ easy, and he’s already a solid step ahead of failure. 

“Unsummon program hanging,” someone reports. Merlin tugs again, feels the solid weight of a flower twined around that mix of heated scrub and chill pine. It’s more balanced now, and it’s definitely _real, _this thing he has hold of through blood and spirit, it’s just not budging. “Wait— yes— no, hung at 39%.”

Merlin’s going to have to go and see what the trouble is himself, isn’t he. Wherever this sense of Solomon-Romani is caught, Merlin has a tie. He’s in the best position to do so, he realizes — he can’t get lost on the way back. If nothing else, Merlin has the perfect tether for a bungee jump. 

He gets to his feet. Wraps briars that aren’t there around his own wrist, feeling the phantom bite and trickling warmth. Pulls just a little bit more, just to be sure he’s really, really stuck in. 

Yep. All right, time for something phenomenally stupid. Merlin flings himself along the sturdy-thorned connection and into the unknown void ahead, and ignores the startled sounds from behind him.

It’ll be fine. 

The void has brighter lighting than he imagined. Merlin recognizes it, a little: he was watching at the Temple of Time, and sure enough somewhere far below his feet when he looks down, there’s the ruins that were left behind. This is a space he shouldn’t be able to get to; a place from which there ordinarily wouldn’t be any way in or out.

Behind him, the sense of Alexander’s dreams still remains. Distant, but there, and with a faint pull that implies if Merlin lets himself drift he’ll be pulled back toward it. Merlin follows the thought of his flower, instead.

The tether of the rose is a thing that doesn’t quite exist: a long stretch of thorns and stem drawn tight and long, hazy and rainbowed and only really _there_ when Merlin looks with the sight that’s more than the mundane, the way he’d normally have to look to see the future. That much existence is enough, for people like him. Merlin wraps one hand around it, then the next, ignoring the nip of thorns as best he can and moving slowly in that way, hand over hand, all the while resisting the urge to drift back. Stubbornly he keeps on toward his final destination: a figure some several meters distant, all floating creamy white and rich crimson. 

“Get _back_ here,” Merlin mutters, mostly under his breath, not expecting his voice to carry. It’s enough to air the grumbled intent, and he saves the imprecations for only his thoughts. Of _course_ this man requires a special expedition into a place _outside the world_. Of course he has to be a gigantic, self-sacrificing pain about it, never mind that it was half Merlin’s idea not to tell him they had a plan in the first place. 

Of _course_ he’d be carrying on a casual conversation with the angel of death— wait, shit. 

Merlin pauses maybe two-thirds of the way to his destination, staring. It’s a being of light and endings, something that he actually kind of wishes he _wasn’t_ seeing all of— more faces than any one being needs, the shape of a shattered vessel, a broad span of something that might be wing-feathers and might be blades. The voice rings in his ears too loudly and harshly to understand.

Somewhere in the mass is a sword Merlin recognizes, and a face like a skull.

At high speed Merlin decides he does not actually want to be looking at this any more, and glances down instead. It may or may not have been the wiser move— he finds his hands on the almost-there briar like he expected, and a narrow sweep of fuchsia implying the drift of his robe, but little else. The projection of him doesn’t have a whole lot of substance to it, and he could have sworn he had more when he started.

Experimentally Merlin wiggles his toes; or tries to, and gets results of precisely jack and also shit. 

Well. That’s a problem, too. 

At least the thorns are solid, the impression of blood still strong and liquid between his fingers. Merlin assesses how existy he feels and concludes that if he’s quick about it, he can get the rest of the way to Romani, lay hands on him, and slingshot both of them back. With any luck. He will admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that he is at this point coloring so far off the page he’s in a different coloring book altogether. 

“You know, it was a lot easier to read your subtext when I was clairvoyant,” Romani says conversationally. His voice is mostly Solomon’s, but his tone is pure grumpy human doctor. 

When the angel responds, it’s a torrent of brass bells and broken glass and ringing crystal. Merlin flinches despite himself. He sure hopes Romani’s getting something useful out of this quick, because he’s about to be interrupted. 

Hand over hand over hand, the insistent tug of the rose’s thorns. Closer Merlin can feel the shift and give where Romani moves his hand— can see the rose-stem become more and more solid, contrast to where his own hands are starting to be clear-translucent instead of frosted glass. And sure he’s made himself invisible a couple of times today, but it feels different here. Merlin doesn’t want to vanish, probably pulled home, before he gets done what needs to be done.

—did the angel just look at him? No, actually, Merlin doesn’t really want to know. He’s already had too many divine backhands in his life. He reaches forward, with his magic as much as his arm, and pulls himself closer. Just a little further. 

He’s pretty sure he’s holding his presence here together out of sheer willpower. This, Merlin thinks grimly, this is where boredom and a vague sense of poetic justice gets him, this is what happens when he tries to _do_ something, this is all of the reasons he never lets people get to thinking they’re friends with him, this is _far_ too much work.

But he’s gotten too far to put it down now.

“I suppose we’d make a decent choir,” Romani is saying, “but I’d really... really prefer to get that life I keep having stolen away from me.”

Two more armlengths. Merlin doesn’t actually want to check if his hands are currently connected to his shoulders by anything other than a pink swirl of magic and intent, but he can still feel the stem and the blood between his fingers. 

“Are there any other options?” 

Hand, pull. Merlin reaches one last time — finds that Romani’s hair is actually a better target than the vine, more conveniently at shoulder level. He misses the main body of fluff, fingers passing right through it, but on a second snatch manages to catch hold of the floating braid, the looped one bound with a golden ring. Blood should paint it crimson, but the only sign Merlin sees of his touching it is a long coppery streak weaving through the braid.

It’s solid. It’s enough. It has to be enough.

“Just one,” Merlin says then, because he has to be smug about this, he _has_ to; and he pulls on braid and rose at once, sharp and insistent and all of the power he has left in this projection, to grab hold and fling them both back the way he came. Toward Chaldea. Romani-Solomon almost turns, instead slams into Merlin’s presence before he can see who has hold of him, and that force carries them back, and then Merlin’s vision is dark for a while, but he does not let go.

When he can see again, it’s all metal and machine, back in the command room of Chaldea. Merlin stares up at the ceiling and wonders when he wound up on his back, which corner of the command room he’s in, and why people are screaming. 

A heavy weight plops down on his chest and the breath goes out of Merlin, even though he doesn’t have breath to need right now. He lifts his head painfully and finds a white bundle of spite and claws now sitting on him. “Oh,” Merlin says, unenthused. “Which part of me are you going to bite today?”

Fou shifts as if he’s going to knead, pulling up one front paw, then the other. Merlin winces pre-emptively, brings a hand up to shove vaguely at the little beastie. “Shoo. I’m leaving in a minute anyway.”

—Oh, the people are yelling because the coffin has life-signs in it. Merlin listens dazedly to the excited whoops of “Ninety-eight—almost—GOT HIM!” and tries to summon up self-satisfaction, smugness and the pleasure of having done the impossible. 

Mostly, he feels tired.

Fou bites his finger, even though Merlin’s technically just a dream projection, still. He shouldn’t be surprised, and yet he yelps anyway. “Would you _stop that?_”

In spiteful answer Fou sinks teeth into his thumb instead. Merlin is not too dignified to whine, tries to pull his hand away and gets only claws for his troubles. See, this is more like it. Thankless violence even when he’s been doing something completely innocuous. Merlin sighs and plonks his head back down. Let the bitey asshole have his fun. He’ll heal it when he dispels this dream.

He’s glad he’s succeeded, really. Merlin traces well-worn paths of reasoning and justification to himself. Now that this is done, he doesn’t need to carry on a steady communication with Da Vinci, and no one will be able to hold him accountable for not showing up in Chaldea if he doesn’t even show up in their dreams. It’s not like any tie here is a friendship, when Merlin’s been consciously trying to shove at anyone who starts to show signs of knowing him too closely.

It’s not like he’s ending much, or like he’ll miss any of this nonsense. As a bonus, ignoring his instant messengers will completely deprive Da Vinci of her ability to scold him for not sticking around. He’ll go back to how he’s supposed to do things: watching, and occasionally nudging a dream for the betterment of humanity.

There’s a rasp of a sandpapery tongue instead of the sharp cut of teeth. Merlin lifts his head again to see that Fou has taken careful hold of his hand with his two front paws, claws lightly unsheathed by way of warning, and is now licking the thorn-marks. Not the bite-marks, notably. Only the tracks the thorns left. 

Capricious little monster.

“I’m sitting up now,” Merlin informs Fou, and pushes himself up with the hand not currently a snack slash chew toy. Fou compensates by skidding down his torso to occupy Merlin’s lap instead, claws still pinpricks around the limb he’s claimed. Merlin takes advantage of the new, upright vantage to look around the command room.

Predictably, nearly everyone is clustered around the coffins, where Romani is emerging. He looks much like his first life, but there are shades of the later body in him. Not a perfect recreation of either. 

Ah, how human, to be imperfect! Merlin rests his chin in his free hand. “Congratulations to us on a job well done,” he says, to himself and the beast who used to be Cath Palug. 

“Kyuuuu,” Fou agrees, with another tickling rasp of his tongue. 

Merlin watches Romani fall into Da Vinci’s arms and smiles very faintly to himself; and then, just as the wondering eyes turn toward him, Merlin reaches out and wakes Alexander up.

The tower is painfully real, after so long away. Merlin oozes out of the corner he’d jammed himself into and flops down onto the stone floor, lays himself out and stares up at a window. Victory! A tragedy solved, an injustice corrected; a life exists that would not have, if not for him. He feels accomplished, and rightly so. It’s just that...

Now he has to deal with the feelings he caught along the way. Now he needs to unpick every piece he touched from himself, make sure nothing lingers that’s Ritsuka’s fierce determined care or Da Vinci’s quieter affection. And whatever Merlin finds within himself after _that_, well, he has the lingering suspicion it’ll be a sheep somewhere in the depths of his subconscious, whatever the hell that means.

He’s going to stay far, far away from Chaldea for the foreseeable future, and as he is clairvoyant, the foreseeable future is quite a ways. Merlin rolls over to mash his face into the cool stone and goes to sleep in an effort to stop thinking about it. 

Every now and then, though, when he’s waking and not at the whims of dreamers, Merlin finds he looks that way anyway, no matter how much he tells himself he’s not going to. Like some part of him doesn’t believe, still, that it’s possible to change the future in such a way; like he has to be sure this one thing is still real.

It is, and he is. Merlin folds his heart away where no one will be able to see it, and keeps watching, here in the privacy of his tower.

Just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So, good night unto you all!  
Give me your hands, if we be friends,  
And Robin shall restore amends."  
-William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
> 
>   * No, if Merlin has his way he's never going to deal with this.
>   * As with raise a cup, I'm always happy to talk about my creative choices.
>   * This work is complete, but I'm not ruling out the possibility of future work in this series. Why should we let Merlin have his way, after all?
>   * It definitely counts as pining even if you don't know you're doing it.
>   * "If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known." -[Tim Kreider](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/i-know-what-you-think-of-me/)


End file.
